


Number 35: Nikolai Luzhin

by Sonora



Series: Heads in Boxes [5]
Category: Eastern Promises (2007), The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Identities, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Crimes & Criminals, Crossover, Fix-It of Sorts, Implied/Referenced Incest, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Movie Spoilers, Permanent Injury, Post-Canon, Torture, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:28:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 54,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2781647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonora/pseuds/Sonora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eighteen months after he leaves the US, Donald Ressler takes what should have been a simple job; hunting down a barber who betrayed the most powerful Russian mobster in London.  </p><p>Saying it doesn't go as planned is an understatement.  Especially once Reddington gets involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First off, let me say this is primarily a Blacklist fic, with a big helping of Eastern Promises on the side. Haven't seen Eastern Promises? I highly recommend it, but I have to warn you, this fic will eventually contain massive spoilers for the movie (I will mark them when they come). If Viggo Mortensen isn't enough to get you to see it, well... just see it. 
> 
> I could have written an OC antagonist here, but doing something similar with Nikolai and Kirill have come across as ridiculous had I attempted it - David Cronenberg is a much better storyteller than I. Their dynamic is perfect for this, though. Apologies to any EP fans; I’ll do my best to give these two their due as well.
> 
> Additionally, this goes AU for The Blacklist after The Scimitar episode, especially when it comes to Ressler. I do not like what they’ve done with him this season. So I’m fixing it. Imo, this is exactly what fanfiction is for.
> 
> Additional tags and warnings to be added as things go along.

Steam curling around his legs, the sound of approaching footfalls echoed down the tiled walls. Ressler didn’t bother to look up.

Maybe if he had, the whole mess to come could have been avoided.

He’d done his research on the place, the proposed location for tomorrow’s meet, before ever setting foot inside. Public bathhouses weren’t the norm in London anymore, but a few still existed. Haunts for certain immigrant communities, or those native Brits looking for something a bit more spacious than the cramped shower in their undersized flat. Ressler hated the idea of walking into anything naked - no clothes, no weapon - but that forty thousand Euro offered in the last email meant he was willing to entertain the notion.

If it was America, he’d be tempted to hide a gun somewhere. But the Europeans played by different rules.

And the bath house he was in was a place of criminals anyway. 

Members only, he’d been told at the door, before he’d slid a hundred across the counter, said he’d consider signing up. He’d left his sidearm at the hotel and his clothes in the locker room and wandered the ancient tiled halls for a little while.

It was daytime, and quiet, but he’d still caught sight of a few patrons, here and there. Eastern European, covered in those faded, monochromatic tattoos that result from using urine and ash as ink; prison tags. And while Ressler had never worked the organized crime desk during his tortured stint at the FBI, he knew enough to know what that meant.

He gave those guys a wide berth, and kept going, nothing but a curious guest wanting to see all the bath house’s facilities, until he felt confident in the layout. Task complete. Leaving right away would have roused attention, however, and the steam room had been empty. 

Ressler breathed in. 

He’d tucked himself into the far corner, where two walls met and sloped back, a comfortable little space in the heat-slick tiles. There was something in the hot fog around him, bright and poignant, like eucalyptus oil or some kind of mint. It burned down his sinuses. Condensed on his hair, clung to the thin robe he’d brought, to keep the damned bird on his back out of sight. 

After the last month he’d spent up north of Trondheim, tracking down a very scared financial advisor who’d failed some very powerful clients, the warmth was good.

“Scoot over,” the newcomer said, a Russian accent heavy in his voice. He had a towel on, barely enough to cover from waist to mid-thigh, the steam more than enough to block out all but his most basic features. Hulking features, shoulders hunched to an almost submissive degree, body obscured, a wraith in the gray.

Ressler didn’t move. “I’m fine right here, thanks.”

“You are sitting in my favorite spot.”

“Yeah, it is pretty nice,” he deadpanned back, still making no effort to shift himself. There was plenty of space in the rest of the room, and he’d been enjoying the silence.

Even through the steam, he could feel the Russian staring at him, eyes dark in the twilight of the room.

Until finally, that Russian broke first. Sat down on the bench next to him.

Ressler saw the faintest - no, definite - hint of an erection rising up under that towel, but said nothing.

There hadn’t been a hint, anywhere, about this being a cruise spot. Ressler wasn’t about to deal with whatever that was.

The stranger shifted then, uncomfortable, the steam twisting off his body. “You are waiting for someone?”

It was the tone - nervous, slightly manic, as if expecting rejection and longing for it otherwise - that got Ressler to answer.

“Depends.”

“What you mean, depends?”

“Depends on why you want to know,” Ressler replied. “Why would I be waiting for someone?”

The Russian made a _tsking_ noise in the back of his throat. “This is Russian bath, not American. I hear, all the things. We don’t let queers in here.”

But there was something in the way he said it, a catch, like he was throwing it up as a defense. 

And maybe that was why it happened.

Why he reached out.

Why the Russian shivered.

“Would you like me to show you, how we do things in American bath houses?” he asked softly, reaching out, taking a handful of over-greased hair and pulling the man in. Close enough so his breath - cool in the heated squeeze of the steam room - ghosted over Ressler’s own cock, making it jump. “Would you?”

“I am no qu...”

“Queer’s an ugly word,” he said - just as quiet, more commanding. He fucking hated that word, and in those sharp syllables, it cut hard. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“But...”

“That is what you want, isn’t it? This?” 

Dark eyes flicked to the door. 

Ressler tugged, a bit more insistently. 

“Who are you more interested in? Somebody who might not come in and see you? Or me?”

“Y-you,” the Russian stammered.

“Then take what you want.”

The hand on his knee had more weight than the words, fingers twisting softly around his thighs, wrapping behind his calves. 

The Russian sank down.

Undid Ressler’s towel.

And Ressler just let it come.

The Russian was all enthusiasm and no technique, swallowing Ressler’s cock down, slow as first, bobbing a little, and then taking it all in, throat constricting and spit dribbling down to disappear in the steam around them. It was messy - messy, to say the least - but it was hot and eager and Ressler hadn’t done this in far too long, and there was something needy in the way that the Russian moaned around him. Needy, and desperate.

Ressler laid his hands in the man’s hair, and just left him work, providing a little guidance to get a rhythm going, but other that that, he just lay back against the tile and let him go. It wasn’t long before the Russian was suffocating himself on his dick, swallowing deep and sucking hard. Ressler tried to tap him out at the sound of pained groans, but the Russian coughed and wiped his eyes and went back to it, his own hand fisting his own cock, somewhere down in the fog. Ressler tried to stop him, slow him down, but...

Teeth caught the underside, right at his glans, and there it was.

Ressler came hard. All over him.

The Russian followed not long after, a pained sound, cheek falling into Ressler’s knee.

Hand still in that greasy hair, splattered now with his cum, Ressler petted him. Gentle. Wordless. Letting him come down.

The sound of ragged breathing filled the room, fading into the hum of the steam generators.

And as the Russian looked up at him, expression obscured as a fresh round of white drifted in, Ressler could see the tattoos. Smears of black across the Russian’s chest. Indistinct, but there.

Ressler wondered if this was one of those guys you heard about sometimes in Bureau training - there was a word, but he couldn’t remember it. Prison bitch. Absolute bottom of the barrel in Russian prisons, from what he understood, normally suffering through a number of forced tattoos as markers of his status, or volunteering for them, after it stopped being a marker of shame, started being one of identity or pride. 

His own bird flashed through his mind, and he shoved it away again, just as fast.

Those days were far, far behind him now. America, the FBI, Red...

Wasn’t what he was anymore.

So he patted the guy on the cheek, and got up to leave, wiping himself down with the inside of the robe as he went.

++++

Ressler had his shirt on already, buttoning up the light patterned cotton, when the door to the locker room swung open, creaking on its Thatcher-era hinges. He didn’t pay much attention to it, ignoring the footsteps and the humming, passing him on the way to the showers. He’d already had his, nice and private, and his body was still languid from the orgasm, and the heat.

So the former FBI man wouldn’t have even caught it at all, if he hadn’t glanced up at the buzzing of a fly, somewhere overhead.

It was the guy from the steam room.

Eight-pointed stars on his chest.

There was nothing he could do, no way to avoid it; their eyes locked, and Ressler couldn’t stop the recognition from flashing across his face. 

He was slammed back into the - mercifully closed - locker, head bouncing off the cheap metal surface, two hundred and twenty pounds of fury bearing down on him. Those thumbs that had been so soft on his calves were like steel, digging into his pulse points, teeth snapping at his face.

Ressler fought down the urge to panic. Running, or punching this guy in the face, would likely result in the same end. 

There was a reason he’d never worked organized crime.

“The fuck you look at?” the Russian growled at him, mere inches away. “You don’t look at me, you don’t even breathe, you understand?!”

He exhaled slowly, letting it turn into the slowest, easiest, most unassuming smile he had. 

“You understand me?! Bitch?!”

“I go back to New York City tomorrow afternoon.” He laid a hand, open, on the Russian’s bare hip. He kept his voice very soft. “Thirty six hours and I’m out of your city. You’ll never see me again. You got nothing to worry about from me.”

Those dark eyes had gone wild, like a cornered animal’s. The words were barely discernible as language. “I am not...”

“What’s your name?”

And that stopped him entirely. “What?”

“My name’s Don,” he said, and took the chance, pushing the Russian gently back, thumbing his cheek, like he had in the steam room. “What’s yours?”

The other man blinked. “Kirill,” he replied, as if without thinking.

And just like that, the power dynamic shifted back in his favor. Instantly. Effortlessly.

Ressler resisted the urge to sigh in relief. Maybe the guy was just a poser - homosexual activity, from what he heard about the Vory V Zakone, was punishable by death. 

And those tattoos, those stars and the church between them, those had been done with real ink, in a real parlor. The lines were too clean, too crisp, to be anything else. Not prison tats, that was for sure. 

Ressler traced a line of crude Cyrillic with his thumb, wondering what the words meant, but he didn’t ask.

“It’s nice to meet you, Kirill,” he said instead, and swept the pad of his thumb across Kirill’s mouth. “Now go take your shower, and enjoy the afterglow, and don’t worry about me.”

“But...”

“Take a shower,” Ressler said, more forcefully.

And Kirill went, shoulders hunching again, glancing back at him once before disappearing around the corner.

Ressler waited in silence, until the showers turned on and that humming got louder, turned into singing. He threw on the rest of his clothes as fast as he could, running the towel through his mostly-dry hair one more time, not even bothering to comb it before bolting to the relative safety of the streets beyond.

He barely caught the next bus from the stand on the corner, headed who gives a shit where, and collapsed in a seat, more than a little shell-shocked. 

A Vor.

Jesus Christ, he’d just face-fucked a Vor.

+++++

Ensconced safely in a new hotel room - Ten Manchester Street, instead of the Dorchester, which he’d liked better - under a different credit card assigned to a different alias, the remains of dinner at his elbow, Ressler poured over his emails again.

Changing lodging arrangements had been easy, second nature at this point. Starting out had been difficult, to say the least, but he’d built himself a decent reputation over the past eighteen months or so. Caution, Ressler had quickly learned, was very marketable in the world he was currently playing in. He normally stayed in the shadows out of habit, rather as an act of necessity, despite good odds that nobody was looking for him.

Not so much as a hint of interest in his whereabouts. No tails, no undercovers, no freelancers. Hell, he’d crossed the UK border on the Eurostar without so much as a single question, and he knew for a fact those checkpoints were loaded with hidden cameras. If his face had been in a database somewhere, that alone would have been enough to get Scotland Yard on his tail.

It was almost insulting.

Or would have been.

He was done with that part of his life.

Ressler still hadn’t replied to the email that had led him to the Finsbury Borough Council Bathhouse. He’d countered two days ago with a higher offer than initial, the reply had come back five thousand higher than that, the proposed time and place of the meet included. Never mind that Ressler had that email account running through half a dozen proxy servers and two separate encryption protocols; the half-hour reply had been impressive. And worrisome.

One guy. They only needed him to find one guy.

Standing offer of forty-five thousand Euro. Half up front.

Yesterday, he’d thought them either crazy or desperate. After checking out the clientele at that place, he thought he had a better handle on what it might be; criminals, especially the brutal Eastern European varieties, didn’t do subtle well. An outside contractor was probably their only chance of finding their target.

But that was before he’d royally fucked up with Kirill. 

He stared at the email. Forty-five was a hell of a lot of money. Was, enjoy-the-entire-summer-this-year-on-your-own-private-island kind of money. Ressler had no delusions about getting out or starting over or any of that bullshit. This was where he was now. Hunting criminals for criminals - or for vengeful fathers, or desperate police captains, or the Vatican, that one time - wasn’t such a bad gig. He still got to find the bad guys, it just wasn’t a national judiciary that brought them to justice. And really, it was neater in a lot of ways. More direct.

But forty-five was still a hell of a lot of money to offer for one man. 

Ressler had never been much of one to care about intuition, to listen to those gut feelings that mostly just told a guy to be a coward, but the job in front of him was trouble. Even without Kirill, that job was trouble.

So he was about to tell the potential client never mind, pick another one of the three UK-based offers that were sitting there, when a fresh email popped up. 

Meet changed. A restaurant called Trans-Siberian - Michelin rated, according to Google. At eleven am, instead of three pm. An extra fifteen hundred for the trouble.

He hit reply.

What the hell?

+++++

The Trans-Siberian was gorgeous.

That was Ressler’s first thought.

That Reddington would have loved the place, was his second.

He tucked his gloves into his long jacket pockets, just taking it in. It was a Raymond Reddington sort of place - deep emerald ceiling, antique crystal chandeliers, red damask curtains and gold tracery in the elaborately carved millwork. Lush and dark, like falling into the woods in deep winter, and Ressler wondered, as some uniformed girl took his jacket and scarf, if it just felt like that because of the name. He’d seen a bit of St. Petersburg, before he started working, when he was still trying to figure out what he wanted to do, but it’d been summer. Too hot, too gray.

“May I have your name, sir?”

“I have an eleven o’clock appointment. I was told my host would be waiting for me.”

“Of course. Right this way, sir.”

The floor was quiet, a few employees out, setting up tables and wiping down glasses. He caught Russian, English in a variety of accents passing between them, as he was led past, the maitre ‘d steering him towards a far back booth with only one occupant. A few of the waiters glanced up at him, and Ressler was glad he’d taken the hint from the restaurant’s rating and dressed for this; dark charcoal three-piece suit, one of those thick, candy-colored ties that were so popular with the Brits. It always felt like armor, in a way, wearing a vest. Another layer of fabric between prying eyes and that goddamn ink on his back, all the things he’d thought - hoped - it had represented.

His host, on the other hand, was making no secret of his tattoos, no less than three visible on his left set of fingers as he flicked the ash off the end of a nearly-finished cigarette. The two-headed eagle of Russia flexed on the back of his right hand, thumb turning the page in some worn Cyrillic novel. Ressler hadn’t received a name, but that was hardly unusual. And it didn’t matter. A worn face, gaunt whipcord frame, ridiculously expensive suit... 

It wasn’t even a bet. 

There were stars on his chest too.

Definitely a place out of Reddington’s world, Ressler thought to himself.

“Mind if I sit?” he asked, not waiting for the guy to deign to speak first.

The client’s eyes pulled up up over the top of the book, and he set it aside, right next to a bottle of vodka near the wall. He waved; Ressler sat. “You are right on time.”

“Of course,” Ressler replied, adjusting his tie a bit. “Where I come from, that’s important.”

“America?” He nodded, the client grunted. “You are fastidious” - and every word was dragged out in long syllables - “about doing things on time, yah?” 

“Depends on the industry.”

“Industry,” the client repeated, and nodded once. “And how ‘bout your industry?”

Ressler shrugged, letting himself fall into the smooth charm that put most people off their guard. He wasn’t about to think he could pull shit over on a Vor, but there was a certain attitude most Europeans expected from Americans. The trick, he’d learned, was giving people what they wanted, in a way that benefitted him. He didn’t need this guy to like him, he needed this guy to think he was controllable. “Timing is everything. Five minutes, one minute, can sometimes mean the difference between catching your man and catching a bullet in the leg.”

The client snorted. “Here, there are no bullets. Only knives. More civilized.”

“What can I say? America’s the Wild West,” he said with a smile.

“Wild West? Indeed. We don’t have Wild West in Russia. Just emperors and FSB.”

“And terrible Soviet-Era cars,” Ressler said.

The client laughed what might have been a genuine laugh. “I have BMW now. Is very nice.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“I must apologize, for last minute change in meeting place. My boss, he says, he not come unless I change, so I change. This place, it for normal business, not other things.”

“People hire private investigators all the time,” Ressler overrode, smooth as he could. “We all have friends that go missing, things that happen that have to be addressed. It’s perfectly normal.”

“I am told you only find one type of friend.”

“That is true.”

“Why?”

“Less risk,” he answered honestly. “Cops don’t care if some Serbian mob boss gets snatched, but private citizens who’ve never broken a law? Oh, they care a lot.”

“Why not just find lost little girls for sad parents?”

“Because there’s no money in it. I’m a big believer in maximizing benefits while minimizing costs,” Ressler replied, and folded his arms, more serious. “Which is why, if I take your case, I’m going to verify that I’m not being hired to deliver you somebody that’ll get me picked up by law enforcement.”

The other man nodded. “ _Da, da,_ I like that. No trouble, for you or me.”

“Indeed,” Ressler said, and leaned forward. “So, who can I help you find?”

“I have friend who is missing,” the client said, and the lightness dropped away completely. “Friend who I desperately need to see again. His name is Azim. Ran a barber shop in Borough of Islington before he, how do you say, skip town.” The client’s hard face twisted into a smile, and he poured them both a drink, sliding the shot glass towards Ressler. “I think he fled to Mediterranean, North Africa, these places. If he was in London, I could find him myself.”

Ressler nodded, trying to think of what resources he could tap in those areas. It wasn’t necessarily a problem, but it could slow him down by a week or two. Working London, however, would be a hell of a lot easier, and probably yield better results. 

A day or two to verify the situation, make sure he wasn’t feeding somebody to the lions. Another two, three days to track down Azim’s contacts here in London and figure out what they knew. Trace the money trail, the flow of false credentials, any additional flags this Azim had thrown up along the way...

“Give me about two to three weeks, and I’ll deliver him anywhere in London that you want. Sound fair?”

“ _Da_ , of course,” and the client clicked his glass against Ressler’s. “We drink to it.”

The vodka was smooth fire, rolling down into his stomach, but what was better than that was the thin envelop the client placed on the table. His retainer, thirty percent of his fee. He had a standard clause for that. Ressler didn’t insult him by counting it, just slipped it into the interior pocket of his suit coat.

Trust, he’d learned, was at even more of a premium in the criminal underworld than it had been in the federal government.

“You don’t even want to know my name?” the client asked, eyebrow cocked.

He smiled and smoothed his tie back under his vest. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I prefer to vet my clients myself.”

The client nodded, and stretched, body spreading out. “Can I offer you lunch? I feel bad, I invite you to restaurant and don’t feed you.”

Ressler thought about it.

“Sure, why not?”

Which mean he found himself not in the restaurant, but back in the kitchens, one of cooks laughing in Russian with the client as he dished them up huge steaming bowls of bright red borscht. It was meaty and warm, and Ressler found himself almost relaxing, sat back against a spotless countertop, just listening, taking it in.

Until Kirill walked in, dressed in a simple dark mechanic’s sweater and washed out jeans, tying an apron around his waist.

It was all Ressler could do to keep from dropping his spoon into his bowl.

But Kirill - mercifully - didn’t even look at him. Just swept up the cook, leading him back into one of the walk-in fridges, complaining loudly in a weird mix of English and Russian - something about the wild boar not being up to his standards. 

If the client noticed anything, he didn’t say it. Just kept eating his soup.

Ressler thought about giving him back the retainer. Then thought better of it.

He moved hotels again that night.

Just in case.

And by the time he left London two mornings later, headed for Morocco, he’d learned enough about the proprietors of Trans-Siberian Restaurant to be damn glad he hadn’t refused the job.

Fucking Mafia.

Chasing Reddington had been a lot more fun.

+++++

Aram was more than halfway through a twelve hour shift when the notification popped up. Silent, non-descript. A red box with an R in it. Something he’d coded himself over a year and a half ago and carried with him, when he’d finally gotten sick of the nightmares and the blood and took his skills off to the private sector instead.

In all honesty, he’d never expected to see it go off.

Maybe he’d just hid his back door into the system that well, that they hadn’t found it and shut it down, and normally that would make Aram mourn the lax network security standards in the federal government, but seeing it now meant the FBI saw it this morning, which meant Ressler was now on borrowed time.

He blinked his way out of a boredom-induced stupor - staring at outage reports for AT&T was _not_ the reason he’d gone to MIT - and clicked the window closed. Heart hammering. 

“Taking a break for _salat_ ,” he told his supervisor, stopping at the lady’s desk on his way out of the dark operations room.

She sniffed. “For what?”

“Prayer, ma’am, which I believe I’m allowed to do based on company HR policy regarding employees’ religious practices,” he replied quickly.

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were...”

“Trying to get back in the swing of things,” Aram said and pushed past her, without waiting for an answer. His parents were Copts and he was agnostic, and it was far from the correct time of day, but whatever. It worked.

He was in such a hurry he almost forgot to grab his phone out of its cubby, outside the secure area. Aram went back, pocketed it, and all but raced outside.

Reaching his car, he dropped into the front seat, hands trembling a little. The notification had been pushed to his private email in the form of text, and he read through that twice, making sure he got it right - but even at that, it didn’t make any sense. 

Aram memorized the name.

Dialed a number he never thought he’d dial. Hoping that it would still pick up, still be answered, that...

“Aram? Talk to me.”

He swallowed. “Yes, umm, I, uhh, I wanted to let you know there’s been a hit on that file we, umm, discussed.”

“Say it without stuttering. What exactly has been hit?”

“The personnel file for Donald Irvington. The entire thing’s been pulled through one of those INTERPOL databases and, get this, downloaded to an external thumb drive.”

“Is that bad?”

“At the clearance level I filed it under, it’s not only unethical but illegal to do so.”

“Indeed?” Reddington’s voice sounded either irate or amused, and Aram cursed himself silently; the man had been in Naval intelligence at one point, after all. 

“I put a tracer on the files, so I might be able to locate the IP address of the next computer that pulls them up, if it’s connected to a network, but...”

“What’s the name of the agent who downloaded the file?”

“That’s the thing that doesn’t make any sense to me,” Aram admitted. “The files show an English IP address, but the requestor’s credentials are for one Yuri Vershinin, who’s assigned to some joint English-Russian task force in London.”

“FSB?”

“I don’t know. It looked like some Scotland Yard thing. I can do some more digging, if you want, figure out who, but this has probably already pinged in the FBI system too, so if they’re still looking for Don, I could...”

“No, Aram. You’ve done enough, and fine work it is, must I say. I’ll take it from here.”

“But...”

The click of the other phone disconnecting was deafening. 

Aram sat there, in the front seat of his worn-out car, and just stared at the phone. 

Why Reddington cared, after all this time, Aram had no idea. But he did know that Reddington seemed to be the only one who cared, Keen writing Ressler off as dead when he didn't reappear after a few months, the FBI vacillating between listing him as having abandoned his position or Keen's position, until other things took the focus off of his case and it was lost.

Reddington cared. And Aram had never really forgiven himself, for what happened the day Ressler left.

“What is it, Aram?”

“Are you gonna go find him? Agent Ressler?”

“I don’t think he’s an agent anymore, Aram.”

“I’d like to help.”

“I don’t know...”

“I failed him once, Mr. Reddington. I’d like to make it up to him. London... London's a paradise when it comes to electronic surveillance, all those security cameras? You need a good hacker, Mr. Reddington. You need my help.”

“You might not like what you find out there.”

“I owe him.”

The phone went mute for almost a minute. Then. “Meet me at Dulles’ private jet terminal in three hours. Don’t worry about packing, I’ll have Dembe pick up what you need.”

“I do need to put in some PTO with work, and...”

“Aram, do you want to help or not?”

“Yeah, yeah, absolutely, but I just remembered...”

“Three hours.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More spoilers in this one...

It took Ressler nine days to find Azim. Another eight to drag his ancient ass back to London.

Getting paid, on the other hand, well. That was a different story.

Working at the Post Office on the Reddington taskforce, resources had been limitless. Everybody picked up the phone. Funding was never a problem. Every CCTV camera, police blotter, TV news station report in the United States had been accessible at the touch of a mouse. Nothing had been hard, or a challenge, or fun. Nothing had been fun for a long time.

One of the nicer things about private contracting. It was a hunt, not a data mining operation.

Ressler began it on Azim’s old haunts, the fog-worn streets of Islington. It was still a majority-white area, but hardly a tourist hotspot, which left him with fewer points of entry. Faking accents was dangerous, and stupid, and unnecessary, if a guy was clever enough. So Ressler threw on his coat and hit the streets.

Azim had owned a barber shop, with a small social club above, frequented by some of the older members of the Turkish community in the area. There were a few other little things in his name, here and there, all easily obtainable through the local municipal records. He couldn’t charm himself access to Azim’s immigration information, sadly, but picking the lock on the back door to the shop at seven AM accomplished much the same thing.

That was the other nice thing about not working for the FBI; no need for search warrants.

But Azim had covered his tracks. His barber shop on the ground floor, and the flat on the fourth, yielded little useful information. Signs that a teenager had lived there for some time. Football paraphernalia. A freezer were a body had been stashed; blood under the rubber seal at the top, half a finger stuck in the trap of the garbage disposal. 

Ressler was able to find a bank account number in the target’s email - the password on his computer was pathetically easy to crack - but apart from a few large cash withdrawals, there was nothing. Azim had probably had a go-bag somewhere in the house. Gotten the hell out of dodge at the first sign of...

Well, Ressler didn’t know why the target had ran. That part, he didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. He put it aside. There was more than enough evidence here to finger this Azim guy as firmly in the Vory V Zakone’s pocket. 

Meant Ressler could move on to stage two.

Posing as a real estate agent with an eye on acquiring property in up and coming neighborhoods, Ressler charmed his was into the back offices of a few different businesses in the surrounding streets. Most of the people he spoke with were more than happy to tell him all about the wonderful opportunities presented by their own tumbledown pile of gray English masonry, but most shut up quickly when he inquired about the seemingly abandoned barber shop down the way. 

The couple that owned the little pawn shop immediately adjacent, however, weren’t Eastern European in origin, but Indian. They had hated their Muslim gangster neighbor, and were almost eager to tell Ressler anything he wanted to know. Three hours and two pots of tea later, Ressler left them with promises that if he could find the executor of Azim’s estate, he would purchase their building as well.

The news they’d given him, at first, seemed a dead end. Azim had no family left in London - a nephew, dead now, throat slit in a cemetery - but he did have many friends, connections everywhere. But connections required the flow of help to go both ways, which meant favors, which meant money. And in an area as poor as that area of Islington, Ressler knew, an infusion of even a few thousand pounds of capital would be incredibly obvious.

He went back to the municipal records office.

The grandest expenditure had been the purchase of a local, European-style coffee house for a friend’s daughter. A daughter whose husband had turned up dead in the Thames a while back, her three kids no doubt bouncing around between various relatives’ houses while she worked fourteen hours a day, trying to stay afloat. 

Resser reviewed the tax records on the business from a small cafe across the street that Saturday, counting off in the margins how many customers came in and per hour. Some simple extrapolation and half a plate of couscous later, and he was sure the cafe had been a low-level money laundering operation.

She would have taken at least some of that in profit. Ressler wouldn’t have been surprised if her business was slipping into the red. It was sad, but it wasn’t his problem, and he wasn’t going to make anything worse by doing what he was planning on doing.

An ancient pair of jeans, a scarf worn wrong, two days without showering, and a couple of hotel towels puffing his Goodwill backpack to bursting. The weather even provided some rain. 

That was all it took. it was perfect.

“Oh thank god,” he stammered, catching her right as she was locking up on Sunday night. “I hate to bother you, but I lost my phone and I can’t figure out where the hostel is, and...”

She’d been beautiful once, the owner. There’d been a photo of her in the newspaper, high school age, sandwiched between her father and Azim at the opening of some mechanic’s shop. But even as young as she still was, years of smoking and stress had dulled her eyes, store-bottled blonde ruined the sheen of her natural black. But there was still something of that girl in there, Ressler could tell, from the way she smiled at him.

“Come in,” she said. “You can use our phone.”

In those trashy thrillers he used to read on the weekends, Ressler supposed this was the point where he’d seduce her, or something like that. But women had been difficult, since Audrey. And if he'd learned anything over the past year or so - after he'd given up trying to make straight sex work - the average woman wanted intimacy more than sex, sometimes to the exclusivity of sex; they wanted to sit and talk and _be heard_ , without feeling like the man on the other side of the table was only doing it as a down payment on the contents of her panties. 

A judiciously emotional story about Ressler’s boyfriend ditching him in Paris did wonders in getting her to trust him. 

They talked all night, his boyfriend, her deceased husband - how much she’d loved him at first, how indifferent he’d become to her, his mistress, his untimely death, the mess it had left her in.

“But I’m glad,” she said, around three in the morning. “I am glad he is gone. even if I lose my business, I am out from under the yoke of his friends.”

“What friends are those, honey?”

“I shouldn’t say,” she said.

Ressler didn’t miss the implication. Oh, she wanted to talk about it. “Who am I going to tell, hon?” he asked gently, and squeezed her hand.

She talked. 

And by the time she was offering to make him breakfast and walk him to his hostel, he’d gotten the answers he needed.

Greece. Azim had fled to Greece.

The girl at the coffee shop had dropped the name of the town - _he comes to me, says I have to buy him a plane ticket to Thessaloniki, using a fake name no less, and how does he thank me? He doesn’t even give me the name of the coffee wholesaler he’s been using for my supplies!_ \- and it’s more than enough to get him started.

He said goodbye to her from the front door of the hostel, her cheap perfume lingering on his clothing. One last warm hug, freely given.

A random encounter with a random stranger. No promises of further contact. Slipping in and out of her life, leaving nothing more than a lingering memory of a good night.

Ressler could live with leaving that much of himself behind. 

Thessaloniki was a huge port town. It wouldn’t be Azim’s last stop, not by a long shot, but it’s the perfect springing off point for a whole host of different places. Ressler catches an afternoon flight out Heathrow; business class, for the wifi and the decent food. He had to hit the ground running.

His strategy was different for the port; he needed direct access to their surveillance footage, and they ween’t going to give that to some shit-for-brains American tourist. INTERPOL Special Agent Donald Becket, on the other hand, could insert himself straight into the security office, shake a few hands, pass around a few business cards, and be welcomed in with open arms. Everyone was very eager to help.

Reviewing security footage was a familiar exercise in tedium, but doing it under that fake badge of his - a very good forgery he’d paid top dollar for, but a forgery still - added a bit of an edge. There was the very real fear of discovery and arrest, and spending a couple of months in Greek prison, only to be eventually ferreted out by the US Embassy, held little appeal for Ressler.

So the former FBI man skipped through the tapes with a bit more alacrity than he normally would have. 

There was no facial recognition software available in that part of the world, in that office, and he had an estimated week or so of footage to go through. He had the date of Azim’s plane, and the fake name he used, but the man had to have paid cash for a ferry ticket. If he took a ferry.

And after two days of staring at the black and white footage, Ressler was beginning to doubt his hunch.

Until he found his man.

Boarding a ferry, last stop, an island called Chios.

An island

Like shooting fish in a barrel.

+++++

Chios was lovely.

That was not why Azim had chosen it.

It was close to the mainlands of Asia, to thin wisps of extended family that still clung to the hills of his homeland.

That was also not why Azim had chosen it.

A long time ago, when they first came to him, he knew, one day, he would have to flee. As a Turkish Muslim - however lapsed - they would never trust him, and he would never let himself trust them. Brutal, Russians were, even without the grinding terrors of the prison system and KGB tactics that produced such criminals as Semyon. He had worked for the Vor, feared him, respected the power he welded, but no, Azim had never trusted him.

And then Semyon had been taken, snatched up by the British police and charged with a sex crime - as if one could ever rape a whore. Leaving his son, that worthless queer son of his, with a multibillion dollar empire he had not a hope of running himself. Kirill, and Kirill’s former driver, the one who called himself Nikolai, but who really knew who he was?

Who knew?

Well, Azim knew, Azim had discovered it. He had done his homework, oh yes. Just because he was not Russian and not Vory V Zakone did not mean he had no friends. And his friends talked, yes, his friends whispered, whispered of many things, whispered of why Kirill had not killed the whore’s baby, of how Nikolai was not arrested in hospital after the failed bath house hit, whispered of the wrong things, the truth, and...

Azim had learned, and Azim had ran.

Chios was always his endgame. Good food and nice ocean and very private. He bought himself a little villa, brought muscle over from Turkey using one of his connections, paid a local boy to go to the market for him and the boy’s mother to cook for him. He had everything he needed. Who could find him in a place that only got Internet service two years ago?

But somebody had.

Curled in his panic room, a glorified closet that had been fitted to look like a seamless part of the wall, Azim tried not to breath too loudly. It was the best that Chios labor could do, but it had seemed enough.

It was not enough.

The guns had gone silent, nothing - according to his watch - for over half an hour. But Azim could hear footsteps, oh, he could hear footsteps, coming down the hall, stopping, coming, stopping, coming...

Stopping.

And there was a knock on the door.

“Azim, let’s be reasonable about this. We both know why I’m here. You can shoot through the door and kill me, but you know your friends are just going to send somebody else.”

Azim squeezed his eyes closed, hands shaking around the hilt of the revolver.

“You could shoot yourself, but then I’ll just have to take your body back to London and who knows, what then? They’ll probably nail your head to the doors of your shop, if there’s anything left of it. Or whatever the fuck it is these guys do to people who piss them off.”

His fingers lost their grip; Azim dropped the gun in the darkness of the little closet.

“Third option, you do nothing. Just stay in there. That’s fine. I can help you out with that. Put some furniture on the door so it won’t open, maybe? I don’t know how big that room is, but I gotta be honest here, I suspect you’ll suffocate long before you die of starvation. I hear it’s nice. Like falling asleep. Breathing just gets harder and harder, you start to feel lightheaded, like you’re floating... you feel like that now, Azim?”

He couldn’t find his gun. Dear god, why couldn’t he find...

“Come on out. I promise, everything’s going to be fine.”

And, feeling like he was going to rattle his bones clean out of his skin, Azim opened the door.

Caught a glimpse of the man who’d done this to him. Tall, blond, built like a soldier but smiling like he was an actor out of one of those American gossip magazines. Dressed all in black, balaclava pulled down around his neck like a scarf.

The blond fucker was smiling. Smiling, as he leaned forward, rag in hand. 

“Appreciate the cooperation, Azim.”

Maybe he could still save himself, Azim thought wildly, as his mouth and nose filled with a foul smell, as the world grayed and consciousness slipped away. Maybe Kirill would allow him to talk, listen, let him live long enough to tell him that Luzhin was...

+++++

“Did you have any trouble?”

Getting a fat, old, unconscious man back to London, under the radar, hadn’t been a simple matter, but it had been fairly straightforward; Ressler boosted a boat. Then it was a matter of ensuring there was enough food and water for a few days, making one of the rooms secure enough to hold his prisoner, and doing it fast enough to avoid detection. After that, once out at sea, it was merely ensuring that he was following the correct route, as plotted by the onboard GPS.

Azim hadn’t spoken, hadn’t looked at him, when Ressler slipped him food in the morning and evening. He just seemed resigned, as if he’d known that somebody would come for him, that is escape had merely bought him time, not earned him his freedom. 

Ressler didn’t much care what the old bastard had done to piss off the Vory V Zakone, and in truth, didn’t want to know. There had been a few rumors in Azim’s old neighborhood, he’d discovered during his days staking the place out, about some knife fight at that bath house, a couple of Eastern Europeans killed, a third man taken to the hospital. Everyone agreed it had happened near Christmas, almost eight months ago.

Ressler had, out of curiosity, tried to verify the story. But there was no record of it. And Azim had fled recently, within the last month. So no connection. It was interesting, of course, the kind of crime that really did fascinate him, but it wasn’t his job to solve crimes anymore, but commit them. Like the three guys he’d killed back on Chios. Somebody else’s job to write up the report on that one.

He’d spent his days instead up in the cabin of the small yacht he’d commandeered, watching the ocean roll by under the keel. The blueness of the waters, the clarity of the sky. The shallow Mediterranean reminded him of the Caribbean, more than he would have liked, and another journey, and more pleasant company.

_Have you ever sailed across an ocean, Donald?_

The night he arrived at Rijeka, he dreamed of Reddington. Reddington, of all the goddamn people.

Ressler had been glad to say goodbye to the ocean that next morning. Leave the boat, steal a car - one of those older model Citroens that looked somewhere between a hatchback and a van. the border inspection standards here were incredibly lax; a couple thousand Euro was all it took. His contact was on shift that day, as promised. The border agent even agreed to dispose of the boat for him. Didn’t do a damn thing when Ressler had hauled a disheveled and handcuffed Azim out of the hold, one prison transport traded for the next. 

Croatia to the Netherlands. Another payment to another contact at another port. Another boat ride - at night, this one, through the darkness, across dark waters that didn’t remind Ressler at all of Reddington, until the salt spray gave way.

Straight up the Thames.

To a small landing, a meeting point marked only by a small single lantern. He’d told them to use a candle in a storm glass of some kind; the flicker and color was unmistakable for a police flashlight.

Now, standing on the grime-slick steps, Ressler could feel the sense of _mission_ that had guided him so far beginning to ebb. Exhaustion, creeping in. He hadn’t slept for the past thirty-six hours. It was almost dawn. His clothes were damp, and he was freezing.

“Problems?” He smiled at Kirill, even though it was Nikolai who’d spoken. A big disarming smile. “Other than the worthless security he had at his villa? Not at all.”

“You kill his guards?” Kirill asked, as if incredulous. His leather jacket was too big, made him look smaller than he was. Nikolai had worn a suit, an expensive-looking overcoat. “You?”

Ressler smiled wider. “Just cause I’m pretty doesn’t mean that I’m harmless.”

Nikolai snorted; Kirill laughed. 

Azim moaned.

Kirill squatted down in front of him, grabbing a shock of dyed black hair with a gloved hand and jerking his head up. “Why do you run from me?” he demanded. Azim closed his eyes, and Kirill shook him, repeated himself, but in Russian.

Azim, haltingly, answered.

Ressler glanced at Nikolai, who just shifted, looking uncomfortable. 

The little exchange between them went on for a few more sentences, getting louder, angrier, yelling...

Tired as he was, Ressler didn’t see the gun until it fired.

Until Kirill emptied half a clip of .308 into Azim’s kneeling form.

In the tight squeeze of the stone alleyway, beyond the river steps, the sound was paralytically loud.

Blood was everywhere.

Including Ressler.

For a moment, he was too stunned to move. To do anything other than stare at the ruin of his target’s body. Kirill, too, holding the still-smoking gun with a shaking hand, seemed lost somewhere between ecstasy and shock at what he’d just done.

Only Nikolai - blood-splattered himself - moved.

Muttering to himself in Russian, he took the gun away from Kirill, tossing it at Ressler, who caught it reflexively, brain still trying to reboot after that _noise_. “Wipe prints,” Nikolai might have said, but Ressler’s ears weren’t working right. He did know what to do, though, and cleaned it down, moving out of the way of the water.

Nikolai wrapped Kirill up in a tight embrace, whispering something in his ear. Whatever it was, it had Kirill nodding, and he slunk back into the gloom, down the alley way.

That left the two of them. Alone.

Ressler did not give Nikolai the gun back, holding it by the barrel, fingers tucked safely into the top of his sweater’s arm. “When can I expect the second half of my payment?” he asked, as evenly as he could. His insides felt scrambled.

Nikolai smiled a humorless smile at him, and prodded the body with his foot. “Give me gun,” he said, holding out his hand for it.

“Why?”

“Need to break his teeth.”

Made sense - perfect sense - so Ressler took the clip out, ejected the chambered bullet, and handed the locked-open weapon over. “Sure thing, chief,” he drawled.

Nikolai didn’t even blink. “Don’t need that gun to shoot you,” he said conversationally, kneeling down. “Have own.”

“Left this asshole’s guards’ side arms back in Greece, and I don’t pack here in Europe,” he said. “You’ll forgive my caution.”

“No. Is no problem,” Nikolai said, and, tossing the gun, caught it so the barrel was in his hand and the grip resting flat against Azim’s jaw. “We pay you, of course. Money will be in account when banks open in Zurich.”

“Good,” he said.

“We have rooms, above restaurant. Nice places, good to clean up, if you want. Better than walking through town so bloody.” Nikolai - very casually - smashed Azim’s jaw with one heavy blow. Turning the head, he continued. “Boss would be mad at me, I let you leave.”

“I have to be frank with you, Mr. Luzhin, but as lovely as the food was last time, I prefer to part company once a job is done. Better for everyone.”

“This job done, yes,” he said cryptically, and lifted the gun again. Azim’s left side was reduced to pulp. He stood, and handed Ressler the weapon. “You can throw in river now.”

There were bits of blood and skin clinging to the grip. Ressler studiously did not look at them. “I prefer to dispose of my guns in a bit safer manner.”

“Bottom of Thames is shithole. Thousand years of English trash. It will be fine. Throw.”

Dredging a body of water was pretty goddamn easy to do, but then, well, there weren’t too many other workable options.

Telling a couple of Vor who just murdered a man in front of him _no_ wasn’t exactly a workable option, either.

“So,” Ressler asked, after Nikolai rolled the body into the current, after the gun was gone and the worst of the blood splashed from the stones, “what is it you would like to talk about?”

“We talk later,” Nikolai said, and stopped just short of the car. “We talk alone, no Kirill. Is not good for boss to involve himself in business like this.”

Ressler nodded, because even with as little contact as he had with these two, it was pretty fucking obvious who was actually pulling the strings in the organization. “Best he leave that to you, eh?”

“Is best,” Nikolai nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Got that out! It got long on me, so the next chapter will have Reddington's end of things, plus moving it all forward, and... oh yes, I'm having fun with this one! Got questions about what's going on? I promise I'll do my best to answer those as I move along, but if I told y'all everything that was happening, it'd ruin ~~my~~ the fun a bit, amirite?
> 
> If there are any type-os, let me know!


	3. Chapter 3

Working with Reddington wasn't half bad.  
   
Not bad at all, really.  
   
Aram hadn't known what to expect, the afternoon he got on that plane.  Only that his supervisor wasn't going to just let him take two or three weeks of time off unannounced, and certainly not with the paltry six days he'd saved up over the past eight months or so.  No, he fully expected to be fired.  He hadn't liked it much anyway, and with his resume, getting hired again somewhere else probably wouldn't be difficult.  
   
He hoped.  
   
But anyway, it was nice to be out of that dark hole for a while, nice to be in London, where Reddington had set him up with a decent studio, an expense account, an equipment set-up tailored exactly to his specifications, and the freedom to set his own work schedule as long as he was actually working towards meeting the mission parameters; finding Ressler.  
   
Aram spent the first four days getting everything ordered and set up.  Dembe had gotten his initial requests filled before Reddington's jet touched down at Heathrow, but some equipment that he needed, he had to build himself.  The components weren't cheap, but the credit card he'd been given had no spending limit.  None.  At all.  Things worked a bit different in UK, and he didn’t recognize all the naming conventions, but a very helpful shop clerk had been able to fill him in on the stuff he couldn't figure out himself.  

"This is an impressive haul," she'd said, after five hours in the warehouse together, as she was ringing him up.  "Mind if I ask what it's for?"  
   
"Setting up a private security system for a client," he'd replied - Aram had never acquired the normal FBI comfort with lying, but that, at least, was mostly true.  "He doesn't trust the over the shelf stuff, flew me over here to deal with it personally."  
   
"How fantastic," she'd said, big grin on her face. “First time in London?”

“No, not really. I mean, I don’t travel much, but I have been to London.”

“If you want to go see the sights...”

“Sadly, I’m here to work.”  
   
It hadn't occurred to Aram until later that she might have been flirting with him.  But that was okay - he had things to do.  
   
The British public surveillance system was legendary; vast, complex, and reaching further than even most locals probably realized.  It was a hacker's wet dream.  But like all treasure troves, it was fiercely guarded, and Aram realized after a few days of probing the central network's outward defenses that he was going to need a physical in.  He needed access.   
   
Not to Scotland Yard or anything official like that.  Hell no.  Too big of a risk.  All streams lead to the ocean, he figured; any firm with equipment that was physically running within the main network would do.  The lower down they were, the better.  It took Aram a couple of days to research the right company.  But after that?  
   
One call to Reddington, and five hours later, Dembe was pulling up in front of his building.   
   
After he'd physically tapped himself a line, things went a bit easier.  Download speed could have been better, and it certainly wasn’t the full, unfettered access he’d been hoping for, but unshielded Cat-6 at a minor contractor's office was far easier to pull from than MI:6 fiber.  A few tweaks to a copy of the FBI's facial recognition software he'd made before he quit, and Aram was up and running.  
   
All of greater London was at his fingertips.   
   
Not that it helped much.   
   
Information was worthless without a way to process it, a system by which to evaluate what was valuable and what was not, what was worth further analysis and what could be deleted. Aram had been able to build himself an impressive set-up - he was definitely keeping the laptop he’d modified - but he didn’t have anywhere near the storage capacity he needed. 

And Ressler had still not popped up. In anything.

“He’s not here.”

“He is.”  
   
Reddington was irritated.  Aram could tell, but he still wasn't sure why.  Maybe it was because they were meeting in one of those chain tourist restaurants near Piccadilly Square, nice and public and very loud, with wait staff that, as Reddington put it, were far too busy to care to remember faces or times.     
   
He nodded.  "As you know, I've been combing through weeks, months, of footage from the surveillance camera network.  Since it's just me, I've had to be a little more clever about where I'm looking, where I started, that sort of thing.  So, knowing Agent Ressler..."  
   
"It's just Ressler now, Aram."  
   
"Of course, umm, where was I?"   
   
"Aram..."  
   
"Oh, right.  So, Ressler's a smart guy.  If he's trying to avoid detection, he's going to avoid areas with high densities of cameras."  
   
"Which is impossible, since this is London."  
   
"True, but there are places where coverage is much more sparse.  I have to locate those neighborhoods, cross-reference the camera IP identifiers, locate those records, and... and this is all rather difficult, as everything seems to be organized by time of install, not geographical location, spread out across a dozen different support companies, and..."  
   
"So what you're telling me is that you haven't gotten very far."  
   
"I'll find him.  It's only been two weeks, give or take."  
   
"He could be in another country by now."  
   
"But you don't think he is," Aram guessed.  "You wouldn't have me looking around here if you didn't think he was still here."  
   
"I need you to look at older records, during the time period we know here was here..."  
   
"Ah, yes, roger that, I am... actually doing that, so..."  
   
"Aram," Reddington said again, sharp.  "You are one of the best IT professionals I have ever met, outside of China's cyberwar division and certain hacker groups out of Finland.  Why you haven't gone into criminal enterprise before this, I have no idea."  
   
The restaurant around them suddenly seemed loud, and Aram leaned forward, trying to block it out. “Mr. Reddington,” he said quietly, “I’m not a criminal.  I'm just helping find..."  
   
"Last time I checked, hacking police databases was illegal. Good for you, moving up in the world.  But I need speed on this, do you understand me?"  
   
"I do, and that is why I am..."  
   
Reddington stood, Dembe appearing out of zero space, or something, with the criminal mastermind’s jacket in hand.  “Eat your food, then keep looking, Aram,” Reddington said as he shrugged it on. “Call me the second you know anything more."

Aram pulled an all-nighter after that. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen hours. It was a hunch, driving him on. Reddington seemed worried, and Reddington was not, in Aram’s experience, a man who worried about anything. All his previous status reports, he’d given over the phone. Quick, simple things. Not a meet, nor a meal.

Something was wrong.

But Aram didn’t find it that night. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen hours straight. He needed a break, a clue of some kind, something that would crack it.

He couldn’t find it.

Until he was woken the next morning, face-down, drooling his dreams into the keyboard, by the ringing of his cell phone. 

His personal cell phone.

+++++

Socked feet soft on the thick carpet of the hallway, Ressler had his shoes by the heels and payment confirmation in his pocket; the money had been wired in that morning at six AM. He was done, then, done with the Russians and blood on the river-slimed stones.

No, it had been as good an ending to the night as could be. Soft bed, clean sheets, and he hadn’t even had to fuck Kirill for it. In fact, he hadn’t so much as seen the man, since getting back to the Trans-Siberian and being shepherded upstairs, into a veritable warren of guest suites. He’d been just awake enough to sweep the room for cameras before collapsing into bed. He’d let himself have the luxury of showering that morning.

Now, Ressler figured all he needed to do was out of the place without getting caught, and he could chalk the whole thing up to a win.

Which, of course, meant he was spotted before he could make the stairs.

“Donald. Where you go?”

He stopped, hand on the bannister of the third-story landing, collecting himself for a moment before turning to face the Vor behind him.

“I thought I’d do you a favor, get out of your hair early.”

“We have business to discuss.”

“I’m not...”

“We discuss this business. Now.”

+++++

The number was blocked.  
   
But the voice he knew.  
   
"Aram?  I'm sorry to be calling you so early, but..."  
   
"No, of course, Agent Keen," he answered instantly, brain doing the math in a flash; East Coast was five hours behind England.  It was four AM back home.  "What can I do for you?"  
   
"I've tried calling around, trying to find you, but I keep getting the goddamn runaround, and I'm running out of time.  I need some help."  
   
Aram opened his mouth to protest; he wasn't working for the FBI anymore, not by a long shot, but...  
   
But Keen wouldn't have known that.  She'd been reassigned, out of the task force the day Reddington informed somebody above Director Cooper he would no longer be working with them.  How, exactly, Reddington had done it and made it stick was the stuff of rumors, but the effect had been what it had been.  The taskforce stayed active for just long enough to run down the last few names on the black list that they knew about.  
   
Keen had pissed a lot of people off.  Without Reddington's implicit patronage, she was just another junior agent.  
   
She'd been the first of them to get moved.  
   
 _She doesn't know I'm out,_ he thought wildly.  
   
"Aram?"  
   
"Yes, Agent Keen, I'm sorry, I wasn't really expecting a phone call from you."  He paused.  "Why are you calling me?  We didn't exactly leave things on good terms."  
   
"Yeah, I know. I’m sorry about that.  But I've got a problem here."  
   
"What is it?"  
   
"Ressler."  
   
Aram stopped walking.  "What do you mean?"  
   
"He's under investigation by Scotland Yard right now.  I could use some help."  
   
"You're" - and he only just stopped himself from saying _here_ \- "in London right now?"  
   
"Yeah.  Think you could beg off for a few days to come help?"  
   
"Why me?"  
   
"Well, you know, you were always so sure he was alive, I was hoping you might have some insights into what he's been doing.  Maybe keeping an eye on him, or something?"  
   
"Agent Keen, Director Cooper ordered me off Ressler's case, convinced he was dead."  He hesitated - lying made him feel like his skin was melting off.  "What'd he do? What’d he’d allegedly do.”  
   
"They think he's connected to the disappearance of a high-profile law enforcement agent here."  
   
Aram stopped walking, the name hitting him like a bolt of lighting.  "Yuri Vershinin."  
   
"Oh thank god," she sighed.  "You have been keeping tabs on Ressler.”  
   
"No, not really.  All I know is that Vershinin pulled Ressler’s fake file a couple weeks ago..."  
   
"And Vershinin disappeared exactly three days later.  Almost to the minute."  
   
"What's that got to do with Ressler?"  
   
"So you haven't been watching him?"  
   
"Agent Keen, do you mind me asking, what is going on here?"  
   
"Agent Vershinin has been working on some things involving some very dangerous and well-connected people. They think Ressler was hired to grab him."  
   
"What do you mean, hired?"  
   
There was a long silence on the other end.  "Do you think you could get a few days off from whatever they've got you doing?  Fly out here, give me a hand?"  
   
Shit.  "Umm... I don't think the Bureau is going to approve that for me.  I'm kind of, umm, on bitch duty."  
   
"Tell me about it," she said, voice bitter.  "I know it's a lot to ask, but... this is really bad, Aram. It's really bad."  
   
"Keen..."  
   
"Only person in the task force who knew him better than me, is you."  
   
That pissed him off - it did.  Because in the end, none of them had really known Ressler, had they?  He'd been a blank, a projection screen.  Smart but not clever, dedicated, loyal. A goddamn Golden Retriever. And yet he’d taken off, flipped the script when everyone least expected it. He’d just... stopped. Left. Walked away from everything, his entire life.

Because of her.

_Because of you too._

Aram hung up.

And went back to his own search.

+++++

“I hear, about this tattoo.”

Wiping a hand across his sweating brow, Ressler wasn’t sure what the fuck he could say to that. He’d slept with one client, one in eighteen months, not counting Kirill. His first client, actually. 

It had been a stupid decision, driven by nothing rational. German college kids on their gap year, or so he’d thought when he took the job, one of them grabbed by the Turkish police, the one who was still free with enough money to pay. A complete accident, that meeting; Ressler had just been at the same hostel at the same time, mentioned that he was a private investigator from the US, offered to help him out. 

Of course, the fact he’d found out about the situation post-coitus. 

Should have been a red flag.

Ressler had done it, though, some weird combination of boredom and purposelessness driving him on. Found the friend, broke him straight out of lock-up in Istanbul, took him back to the college kid from the hostel.

Who’d shot him in the head. Took off before Ressler could stop him.

The boy he’d gotten out of lock-up, Ressler found out, was the son of a prominent Turkish politician, an outspoken advocate for Christian refugees in the region. The boy had been taken into custody for his own protection. And Ressler had helped some German hitman kill him.

Took Ressler a few weeks to hunt that hitman down again and put a bullet in his head. Only seemed right, after how badly he’d misjudged the situation. 

Hunting criminals was easy.

It didn’t matter what happened to them at the end of the day.

“What’d you hear about my tattoo?”

“I hear, American man with sea bird knows how to find people. I want to make sure, it is you, but we move meet. Is okay.”

“Explains the sauna,” Ressler grumbled, rubbing a finger across the edge of the bench. It was all fresh, warm-scented cedar, the room not as claustrophobic as he would have thought, looking at it from the outside. A private place, tucked in behind a huge marble-tiled bathroom in what had to be the largest of the floor’s suites. A bathroom, that currently contained his clothes. 

“Yes, good for that,” Nikolai agreed, stretching out, obviously unconcerned by the situation. Unlike Kirill, he was covered in ink, real prison symbols, a life of violence written out in a code Ressler didn’t know. “And warm, when city is so cold.”

“You said you had business...”

“Yes, but I am confused by this tattoo. In Russian prison, bird is not good choice,” Nikolai said easily. “Feather, bird... these are bad things, mean bad things.”

“Wait, let me guess. Mark of a prison bitch, or snitch, right?” Ressler replied, refusing to let himself be pushed any further down than he was. He was already naked, as exposed as he could physically get. But it was more than that. Whatever the fuck was going on here, it didn’t feel right; didn’t feel like standard intimidation tactics. He couldn’t figure out Nikolai’s game.

“Yes.” The Russian gangster grinned, all teeth. “Bitch.”

“You said you had something to discuss with me, and I was hoping that to be something other than my sexual preferences,” Ressler said, anger mounting under his studiously calm exterior. “If it’s the way I handled this job, I would of course welcome any feedback you have for me.”

“Feedback?”

“It’s an American thing, maybe.”

Nikolai nodded, and leaned back, ink-stained arms spreading out across the cedar. In the confines of the small sauna, he seemed grotesquely large. “I have new job for you.”

“Okay.”

“Job Kirill does not need to know about. But I will need update. Often, as you work. We work together, yes? Maybe you stay here.”

That was interesting, not in a good way, and Ressler had no problem saying so. “If you don’t mind me saying, I have no problem with the first condition. But the second? I take issue with that.”

“Why?”

 _Because if you know what you’re looking for, you’re going to see Quantico training in how I work._ Ressler shook his head. “It’s not the way I work.”

“Not even for one hundred thousand euro?”

Ressler blinked. “What?”

“One hundred thousand, one man.”

And that amount should have set off all the klaxons in Ressler’s head. Every single one of them. That was a huge bounty on a single man. _Vast_.

“What’s the name?”

“Will you do it?”

“I need to know who it is.”

Nikolai seemed to hesitate, but nodded anyway, a bead of sweat rolling down his cheek. “Yuri Vershinin.” There was a pause. “He work for Scotland Yard.”

That wasn’t something Ressler even needed to think about, even without the memory of Kirll murdering Azim still fresh in his mind. “Not a chance. I don’t hunt cops. Especially when that cop is going to end up in the Thames.”

“This is not for Kirill. This is for me.”

Ressler stood. “Thank you for your time, and your hospitality, Nikolai, but I think I’ll be letting myself out now.”

“He is enemy, most days,” the Russian snapped, leaning forward. “But he is key witness for Crown, in important trial, for former head of Vor here in London. Without guilty verdict, Kirill cannot hold power in organization.”

“You mean you can’t hold power.” Crossing his arms, Ressler stared down at him. “I fail to see how disappearing him is going to help you, though.”

“I don’t need him disappeared. I need him found.”

“Crown prosecution probably him squirreled away somewhere...”

“No. He is missing, I am told by source in Scotland Yard. Confirmed last week. My people, I cannot use. Must use you.” A long, spidery finger was pointed at him. “I need your skills.”

“I...”

“A hundred and fifty thousand. Alive, in one piece, at least, enough to give testimony.”

He couldn’t refuse that kind of money - Ressler had run enough interrogations to know that it would be out of character to refuse that kind of money. And it was enticing on its own. Very, very enticing.

“I’ll ask around, see if I can dig anything up for you.”

Nikolai nodded. “ _Spasibo_.”

Ressler stood. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go put my clothes back on now.”

“Donald,” Nikolai said, before he escape, “tell me. What does your bird mean, in American culture?”

“It’s an albatross,” he replied quietly, without turning. “They bring luck to sailors.”

“You are not sailor.”

“Yeah, well, it also can mean you carry a heavy burden, a curse that can’t be shaken. More like your birds, maybe.”

“What burden do you carry, Donald?”

“Right now? Finding this Yuri guy for you.”

Ressler took his clothes into the bedroom area, dressed in front of the mirror. Which was a bad idea; he could see the ink, standing out from the flush of overheated skin. 

He had looked it up. Once. After getting it. In the giddy endorphin high that followed the low-level pain of another night's work, Ressler had looked it up. What was so special about the rather plain bird gracing his body.

It came back to him in a rush, in that moment, how it had felt, seeing those words, wondering, hoping, if they held true for Reddington. If Reddington had put it on him as a real claim, a warning to others - _kill this man, and invoke my wrath._

It had made Ressler feel safe, oddly enough. Something permanent, assured, to hold onto at a time when the whole world had been sliding apart. Even if it was just as possession, he held value, somebody valued him, somebody still wanted him, still loved him. That’s what Ressler had thought. 

Before life had reminded him of exactly how heartless a human being Reddington was.

How little he cared.

How easily he threw people away.

Nineteen months now. And not a shred of interest. Not a single ping on the radar.

Hell, Reddington had probably forgotten he even existed. And here Ressler was, still carrying the man’s claim on his skin.

If he didn’t remember how bad it hurt, Ressler might have been tempted to just burn the goddamn thing off of his back.

“I should get you blacked out,” he muttered to the image in the mirror, and pulled on his shirt.

Before he started reminiscing. Before he started missing Reddington again. The rough desperation of his kiss, the way his body felt, squeezing around Ressler's cock, his fingers, buried deep in Ressler's own hole.

No. He didn't miss that bastard. Hadn't expected a goddamn thing out of him. Not at all.

+++++

“Aram?”

“Yes, Mr. Reddington, I am working extremely hard to...”

“Did you get a call from Elizabeth Keen in the last hour?”

“Umm...”

“Don’t be coy with me. She called me and curiously enough, mentioned it.”

“Don’t... please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not, umm, exactly comfortable with...”

“Call her back, tell her yes, you just checked flights, and you can be there in sixteen hours."  
   
"But..."  
   
"But nothing.  If Scotland Yard is getting involved, I need to know what's going on."  
   
"Why don't you just talk to Keen?  She's already there, she's still in the FBI..."  
   
"Call her back, Aram. Consider it an order if that makes it easier.”  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And Sonora goes with the long route on this, and puts Keen into play too. Heh...


	4. Chapter 4

“What you’re telling me is that this isn’t conjecture? You can confirm this intel?”

Aram had never been much of one for flying; family vacations in the summer had involved month-long trips back to home, before everything had gone to shit in the Middle East, and outside of that, there hadn’t been money for much of anything. Traveling on his own wasn’t really his thing, and the FBI didn’t let their IT experts go gallivanting all over, like field agents did. So of course, he’d never been on the inside of one of those airline lounges, the ones you got access to if you flew like a hundred thousand miles a year.

Aram had certainly never been in anything, in any airport, as nice.

It was some kind of privately managed, pay-by-the-hour place that looked like the lobby of a five-star hotel, sleek wood and polished chrome. It had a full wet bar and a spa. And, of course, the manager had personally greeted Reddington with a big hug and friendly smile.

That alone had been disconcerting.

More disconcerting, though, had been the task that criminal had laid out for him, once that manager had shown them back to a richly appointed private room.

“I’ve seen to it that you’ll have this room the entire day, as well as access to their own internal Internet, wifi or hard line, your choice. I want everything Lizzy sent you cross-checked and verified, before they pick you up tonight. All of it.”

Reddington hadn’t really known what he was asking, though. It wasn’t like Keen had sent him a stack of intel on Ressler via web mail - no, he’d had to give her an email address for an email account on the actual FBI server, which meant... well, it had taken him a frantic ten minutes to set it up, using the back door program that had pushed him the info on Ressler to begin with. But retrieving what she sent was more difficult.

It had taken him almost four hours to find, decrypt, and download what she’d sent him. What Scotland Yard was looking at.

It was disconcerting. 

It was very disconcerting.

Especially the most recent stuff.

“I can’t confirm the veracity of all of this. I mean, I can confirm that these are real police reports about real things that have happened...”

“But the connections to Ressler are dubious?”

“Unsubstantiated.”

“Distinction without difference,” Reddington muttered, and pushed the laptop screen back a bit, changing the angle as he skimmed another scanned police report. French, that one; Aram hadn’t been able to read it. Most of INERPOL’s documents seemed to be in that, if they weren’t in English.

“Aram?”

“Yes?”

“You need to meet Lizzy down in the arrivals hall in shortly. I would suggest that you head down there now.”

“Okay, do you, umm, do you want me to...”

Reddington looked up from his contemplation of the computer screen. “I’ll keep the laptop. Light reading for bed tonight.”

“What do you want me to tell Keen?”

“Stick to the story. Whatever you need to do.”

“But...”

“It should go without saying, you can’t give them any reason to suspect your cover story, or even I won’t be able to keep the Brits from poking holes in it.”

Aram felt very small in his suit, like a little kid wearing his older brother’s clothes. He wanted to help - he needed to help, he did, but this was far, far outside his comfort zone. Packed luggage at his feet that wasn’t his own, a friend’s face on half a dozen police reports, dead bodies in Greece... 

“Why didn’t you go to her? Ask her to keep an eye on things?”

Reddington cocked his head, expression blank. “As I recall, you’re the one who volunteered, Aram.”

“Yeah, but...”

“You’re going to be late, Aram.”

The luggage handle cut into his hand.

But Keen was waiting, as promised, at the curb. In one of those unprofessionally tight suits of hers. Hair even shorter than Aram remembered it. Looking utterly exhausted.

Showtime.

+++++

Vershinin’s trail wasn’t so much cold as it was non-existent.

Nothing.

There was nothing.

Which - Ressler realized as he recovered from a very comprehensive blowjob - was a clue, in and of itself.

“Don?”

Keeping his frustration at having his thoughts interrupted well behind his teeth, Ressler offered the man between his legs a wane smile. 

One of Kirill’s hands splayed out against his knee. His hair was destroyed, from where Ressler had been tugging on it. Come and spit was smeared across his inexperienced face. Not twenty-four hours ago, Ressler had watched Kirill murder somebody in cold blood, and somehow, like this, he looked innocent.

Or would have, if not for those dead-soul eyes of his.

Staring back up at him, practically begging for approval.

It was unnerving. Dangerous, powerful. Like he wasn’t the guy who used to mewl under Raymond Reddington, begging for permission to come. Like he’d never let Reddington throw him against one of those boards in the Post Office and...

He’d left the FBI. Left Reddington. None of it had been real; none of them had wanted him. But Kirill had come for him, knocked on his door and stammered an excuse that was more Russian than English. And while Ressler had no illusions about who was actually in charge in the organization - who was the real power behind the throne - he wasn’t about to tell Kirill no.

Didn’t really want to. 

It wasn’t about feeling desired, no. It was about feeling like he was in control.

_This is why you left, this is why you ran from him, this, so you wouldn’t be his..._

“You’re so good, Kirill,” he murmured, fingers firm against the Russian’s scalp, holding him in place, trying to keep himself from falling into that nest of regrets again. “Very good at this indeed.”

Kirill flushed, slumping back over his knees as he did so. “Maybe is good in America,” he muttered to the carpet. “Is very bad here.”

Outside the large window of his comfortable guest suite, the rain-washed street was aglow in soft light from the streetlamps, the backlit plastic posters that graced a passing bus. Water droplets clung to the glass. All else was darkness. Ressler had turned off the lights in the room on Kirill’s request. 

His cock, soft against the fine wool of his trousers, itched with drying spit.

Tucking himself back in, Ressler pushing out of the room’s wingback chair, swinging one leg around Kirill as to avoid kicking him. “You want a drink?” he asked, cracking the door on the room’s small fridge. It was well stocked with booze, basic but hardly well-grade; he had no doubt that the restaurant on the first floor would supply better if asked. He retrieved a can of tonic water, a couple of the little airline bottles of Bombay Sapphire.

Kirill nodded, still knelt on the floor.

Ressler mixed a couple of drinks in silence, mind working again on Nikolai’s little mission. Yuri Vershinin. There was no point in looking any further for him until he’d established some kind of reason for his disappearance; it wasn’t _that_ he was gone, but rather, who would have taken him? Why? The obvious answer, based on what Nikolai had told him, was somebody within the organization itself, looking to get the patriarch back.

Oh, Ressler had looked that up. Kirill’s father, Semyon. Raped a teenage girl from the Ukraine, one of the sex slaves at his private stable. There hadn’t been much more than that, on the civilian side of the news cycle, but Ressler had seen enough of that sort of thing to fill in the rest for himself. Vershinin’s name had come up, so clearly the guy was connected to it.

But there had also been a spate of killings over the next few months after that. Professional assassinations, professional processing of the bodies. Nikolai, consolidating power, no doubt. Last one had been - with the except of Azim and the night previous - three months ago. The timeline didn’t make sense. 

Besides, Ressler knew through long, hard experience; criminals didn’t kidnap cops, no more than cops shot criminals in cold blood. It was structural. It was the way things just... _were_.

It wasn’t anybody in the Russian mafia, then. Ressler could feel it in his bones. 

Something else was going on. Something unexpected.

Which left a national player - Scotland Yard, or the FSB, pulling Vershinin out. Or...

“Hey, do I get my drink now or what?”

Kirill had pulled himself up into the chair, face still a wreck, haughty.   
Ressler had the sudden, barely controllable urge to slap him.

“It’s just you and me, Kirill,” he said calmly, walking back over, very deliberate, and kneeling down. He took the Russian’s hand and formed it around the tumbler. “There’s nothing bad here.”

Flinching, Kirill looked away. The ice cubes in the glass clinked. “What is it like, in America?” he asked. “Where you can do this all the time?” 

“Easier,” Ressler said honestly. “And harder, in some ways.”

“How is harder?”

“When it’s out in the open, means you can’t really hide from the other shit.”

“What other shit?”

“Like relationships.”

Kirill’s eyes widened, and then narrowed. “Relationship?”

“Fucking around is easier,” Ressler told him. “When yo[;’.u have to hide it, all you can do is fuck around. It’s a self-reinforcing system, no input from you required. But when there’s a possibility of something more, you want it to be more, even if it can’t be.”

It seemed to strike a chord with Kirill. “Because other man doesn’t want a queer?” he asked softly.

“Sometimes he just doesn’t want the queer who’s right in front of him,” Ressler replied.

The Vor eyed him warily, as if the discussion had somehow become a rabid dog, poised to strike. “You have man like that?” he asked slowly.

And for some wild fucking unknown reason, Ressler thought about the box. Anslo Garrick. Bleeding out on that metal table, how the warmth had left his body, draining out to splash on Reddington’s thousand-dollar shoes. The way it had returned, Reddington sliding that needle into his arm...

_...and you thought we had nothing in common..._

“Thought I did,” he said gruffly.

+++++

It wasn’t until Kirill finally left, that Ressler was able to get some work done.

There was no evidence.  Vershinin's apartment had been locked up as if he was merely leaving for the day, no signs of forced entry.  Dishes left neatly in the drying rack, bed made, nothing missing.  His black 2006 Audi A6 had been left in the apartment building's car park, issue GPS tracking system still in place.  He never walked to work, nor took the subway.  Worked long hours, always left before and came home after the security guard's hours.  Was a quiet and inconspicuous tenant.   
   
That was what the nice office manager at the complex had told him, when Ressler had flashed her a smile and his INTERPOL badge earlier that day.  
   
The reporter, who'd written the initial story on it, before the police stopped cooperating, had been a bit more helpful.  
   
Nobody had seen him get grabbed; the camera at the traffic light, just outside the building, showed nothing unusual.  Same story for every camera within a ten block radius.  The guard who'd been on shift the day of his disappearance had reported no unusual activity, in or out of the car park.  The night before, Vershinin had left the office at almost ten, according to the building records.  Vershinin had made no cell phone calls the next morning, his phone inactive.  It was a regular flip phone, nothing fancy, according to everyone who knew him.  
   
"That's something, isn't it?"  Ressler had commented.  "Means the battery's been taken out.  So either he walked out of here on his own and did it, or somebody did it for him."  
   
The reporter had smiled, like she hadn't thought of that, and told him about the case; the rape, the baby.  She suspected connections, but Ressler just thanked her for her input and promised he'd be in touch.     
   
Yuri Vershinin had woken up one morning, and vanished.  
   
As if swallowed by a goddamn black hole.  
   
But nobody just vanished.  Not by a long shot - Ressler knew that all too well himself.  Nobody ever disappeared.  There was always a trail, always some clue.  
   
He'd walked by the apartment building, after talking to the reporter.  Pleasant enough, with eight stories of 1800s Neoclassical spilling out onto a busy street.  An older building, then, which meant the small underground car park had been dug out long after construction, one of those places, Ressler suspected, that charged for a parking space.  That was easy enough to confirm; Yelp was a goldmine of open-source intelligence on just about any service industry location in the Western world.  
   
Charged for parking spaces.  
   
Which meant parking spaces were _assigned_.   
   
Which meant the car park had entry controls in place, like a guard shack or key card or...  
   
Or the number off a guy's Quick Start tag, for the M6 tolls.  
   
Ressler pushed back from his computer, fingers tapping on the solid walnut of the guest room's little table.  The police had impounded the Audi; the reporter had told him that much.  There was no way of getting to it without walking into a heavily monitored law enforcement facility.  But if his hunch was correct...  
   
Ressler called his reporter.  
   
"Agent, what can I do for you?"  
   
"The constable's office is giving me the run-around, so I'm wondering if you might be able to help me instead."  
   
He could almost hear the smugness in her voice.  Reporters loved this kind of shit. "Absolutely, anything to help the investigation."  
   
"Do you remember what parking space Mr. Vershinin's car was found in?"  
   
"What parking space?"  
   
"Yeah.  Which space?"  
   
"I'll need to get my notes.  Do you mind waiting?"  
   
"Not at all."  
   
She found it.   
   
He'd left the officer manager with a smile and a promise to get back in touch, should he need anything else. It was late, but not too late - barely past ten on a Wednesday, and the building had a 24 hour conceirge desk. Ressler called her, and she called the desk, and twenty minutes later, he had a scanned copy of Vershinin's lease agreement, inquiry emails and appointment schedules for potential renters who'd requested to come in the day before Vershinin had been grabbed, and best of all, a vehicle accountability sheet, written out by the security guard who manned the car park entry during business hours.  
   
At 11:37, the day before Vershinin had disappeared. _Black Audi sedan_. Correlating to a Mr. Thomas Okoro who ultimately decided not to go with the apartment he'd toured. The security guard hadn't written a time in for the car's departure; that time had been entered in a different color ink, by a different hand. Three other "guest" cars had similar time stamps. Likely the second shift guard, pencil-whipping the paperwork.   
   
And the parking space in the lease agreement was not where the car had been found.  Those were a few unassigned guest spaces, it seemed like, overflow probably.  He could have confirmed with the apartment manager, but why?  This wasn't evidence gathering for a court case, not anymore, and Ressler found that a preponderance of evidence was more than enough for what he was doing these days.   
   
Besides, this made sense.  Ressler found himself grinning as it all came together.  
   
They'd gained access to the car park and parked in Vershinin's space, likely waiting in the trunk or low in the back seat.  Finding it blocked, and exhausted as he was from a fourteen hour day at the office, Vershinin had parked in one of the few open spaces and gone up to bed.  In the morning, he'd gotten ready as usual, come down, gotten in what he thought was his car and drove out, Quick Start tags switched out.  Or something like that.  It could have involved force or coercion or anything else, but the important thing was that the Quick Start tags between his car and the other vehicle had been switched.  
   
The tag couldn't have been taken.  This was a professional grab.  Every detail would have been attended to.  That would have had to be swapped out, or it would have aroused suspicion.  So either the kidnappers swapped an existing tag in the decoy car, or they'd purchased a new one, but either way, it would have left a trail he could follow.  
   
"Impound," Ressler muttered to himself, glancing out the windows at the rainy night, and grabbed his jacket.   
 

+++++

   
The backseat of the van was tight, uncomfortable, and Aram was already tired from a long day of data crunching; he wasn't in the mood to be questioned, which some part of his brain realized was perfect.  
   
He was, after all, supposed to have just gotten off an intercontinental flight.  
   
"Aram, this is Inspector Hall.  He's heading up the investigation on ," Keen was saying, gesturing to an older, white-haired man in the driver's seat, and then, to an younger guy on the passenger side, "and this is Chris Ramage, from the Embassy. He's the one who called me."  
   
"Ressler," Aram echoed, faintly irritated that Keen had given these people their old colleague's real name.  That alias had been put into play for a reason.  "Yes, of course.  I am a bit confused as to what help I can offer here.  I'm sure you have your own network team, far more accustomed to the systems here than I am."  
   
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Mojtabai," Inspector Hall said.  "Agent Keen has had nothing but good things to say about you.  I hope you don't mind me riding along to take you back to your hotel."  
   
"Thank you, I appreciate that, but..."  
   
Ramage cleared his throat.  "You were on the Reddington task force with him as well, weren't you?"  
   
Aram looked over at Keen, anger mounting.  "What didn't you tell them?"  
   
Keen groaned.  "Aram..."  
   
"No, Agent Keen, that information is classified to..."  
   
"And I assure you, everyone working this case has been cleared for access," the American, Ramage, interrupted.  "Intelligence sharing, even between us and the Brits, is something we take very seriously at the State Department."  
   
How the State Department had gotten involved, Aram could guess.  Probably got involved once they realized they had some employee who wasn't an employee on some INTERPOL watch list.  It didn't much of a difference, the how.  Reddington was going to be pissed about this.  And then Aram wanted to kick himself for worrying about what the criminal mastermind thought about it.  It wasn't about helping Reddington get whatever Reddington was after; it was about helping Ressler.  It was only about helping Ressler.   "I don't know what you think Ressler's done, Inspector, but I can guarantee it's not what it looks like, in all those files that Agent Keen sent me."  
   
"Aram," Keen interjected, "we're just trying to solve a kidnapping here..."  
   
"And you think Ressler did it?  You think he, of all people, would be working as some kind of... international hitman?"   
   
"We don't know what's going on right now.  That's what we're trying to figure out," Hall said plainly.  "Three dead in Greece, one of our top inspectors missing here, and all of it connected to your old colleague."  
   
"They have surveillance footage on him on the island where the murders occurred, Aram.  Clear as day."  
   
He ground his teeth.  "Yeah, I saw that, in the package you sent me.  It doesn't mean Ressler murdered anyone."  
   
"One of the victims had his throat slit with his own knife, but the other two were taken out by chest shots, also from the first dead man's gun," Hall said pointedly. "Very good shooting, no wasted ammo.  Forensics is terrible out there, but we do know the shots came from a distance, in the dark.  We don't normally see that kind of precision in Europe."  
   
"And a military-trained professional would be going for head shots," Keen said quietly.  
   
Aram shook his head.  "You don't know him, Mr. Ramage.  He wouldn't be killing people for money.  Don's not that kind of guy."  
   
"I agree," said Keen, "that there's more to this than what we know right now.  But... we have to at least consider the possibility."  She sighed, and sat back in her seat, eyes out the window.  "He wasn't exactly in the best shape, when he left."  
   
"Yeah.  I remember."  Aram ran a hand across the tired fabric of his pants.  "Why did you call us, anyway?"  
   
"I called the FBI when it became apparent that this Irvington, or Ressler, had ties to Raymond Reddington.  Can't take any chances when a known associate of his pops up in town."  
   
Aram opened his mouth, and shut it again, glancing over at Keen.  "He's not connected to Reddington.  He spent years chasing the man.  He hates him."  
   
"Really?" Hall asked.  "Because I've got a two-year-old report from the Haitian police force that says otherwise."  
   
Biting back a protest, Aram just nodded, filing that bit of information away.  He'd thought Reddington had simply come up with the alias for the purposes of finding Ressler, but if it had been in play before that...  
   
Keen gave Aram a look, a look that very clearly conveyed _this is why I called you._   "There's a lot of moving pieces to this thing," she said.  "We know that a man of Ressler's description has been rumored to be working as some kind of... I don't know what the right word is, hunter, over here in Europe for the past year or so, and they think it's got something to do with Reddington."  
   
Aram pulled up that particular piece of evidence on his laptop - of everything Keen had sent him, that was the most illogical of them all.  "This guy?  This Albatross guy?"  
   
"Yeah.  That's him."  
   
"I still don't buy that he's..." he began.  
   
But then Hall's cell phone rang.  
   
"My apologies, but we just had a report come in on Ressler."  
   
Keen leaned forward.  "Where at?"  
   
"The impound yard, where Inspector Vershinin's car is located."  
   
"How long?" Ramage asked.  
   
"This time of night?  Maybe an hour."  
   
"See if you can get them to stall him."  
   
"Of course."  
   
Aram settled back into his seat, palm of his hand ground into his forehead.  
   
Ressler.  With an alias.  Like he was a Blacklister himself.  
   
It should have been funnier than it was.  
 

+++++

   
"He was perfectly sweet," the girl behind the counter was saying.  "And he had credentials.  Everything checked out just fine."  
   
"You ran his badge?"  
   
"Well, no, but..."  
   
Keen came out of the back room, keys and plastic-sheeted clipboard in hand.  "The desk clerk said Ressler came in, identified himself as an INTERPOL agent, and requested to see Yuri Vershinin's car," she said, gesturing to Aram, who fell in step behind her, eager to get out of the cramped, moldy-smelling little office.  Not that the impound yard beyond was any better, with its mud and broken vehicles, all soaked with harsh yellow light from the overhead flood lamps.  "He asked for the keys, spent five minutes out there, came back in and signed out.  It was her supervisor, back in the back, who saw on the security system and recognized his photo."  
   
Aram bit his cheek. "His picture's circulating?"  
   
"Yeah, released today.  Scotland Yard wants him found."  
   
"He's too smart for that.  If he's... done what you say he's done, he won't let himself get caught like that."  
   
Keen sighed.  "I'm not the one saying he's done it."  
   
 "But you're agreeing with it?"  
   
"I don't know what to think."  The rain from earlier in the night had devolved into a light mist, clinging to Aram's beard as they walked out to the missing inspector's car.  "But I do know Ressler's in a lot of trouble."  She pulled the collar of her jacket up a little tighter, and they turned down one of the rows.  "I knew I shouldn't have let the addiction thing go."  
   
"Addiction?" Aram asked, eyes going wide.  "What do you mean?"  
   
"He got hooked on painkillers, I guess, from the time he got shot.  Anslo Garrick."  Aram shuddered at her words, trying to block out the terrible memory of that day.  Blood on the office floor, Don pulled from the box, minutes from death.  "I never... if I'd known how badly it was affecting him, I would have said something to Cooper."  
   
"You knew he was using, and you didn't do anything?"  
   
"He promised me he could kick it on his own," Keen replied, shoulders slumping a bit.  "That was the last conversation I had with him.  I should have done something.  It was pretty obvious he couldn't take care of himself.  And now look at him."  
   
"I think he's taking care of himself pretty well, don't you?" Aram snapped, not wanting to listen to any more of that, and stopped up short in front of a black Audi.  "This it?"  
   
"Yeah."  Keen snapped on a pair of latex gloves, clicking the remote to unlock the door.  "Don't touch anything, okay?  Don't want to destroy any evidence here."  
   
So Aram waited in silence, while she inspected the inside of the car thoroughly, obviously comparing the state of the interior to whatever they had written down on the board.  Status when found, probably.  "He won't have left anything," Aram said.  "He's too smart for that."  
   
"Walking into a police impound yard isn't smart, Aram."  She pulled her head out.  "There's nothing here.  Nothing's out of place.  He didn't take anything."  
   
Aram stayed silent, keeping his thoughts to himself.  If Ressler hadn't come to take something, it meant he'd been there to learn something.  But what could you learn from an empty car?  
   
 _Identification numbers,_ he thought.  But the license plate was Vershinin's - he'd seen the police report.  Which meant there was some other identifier on the car.  Aram didn't know what it would be, though.  What could possibly be of use.   
   
"You think he came here to retrieve some kind of evidence?"  
   
Keen ran a hand through her damp-frizzed hair.  "Like I said, Aram, I don't know what to think."  And she popped the trunk.  
 

+++++

   
It was well past midnight when Ressler finally dragged back in to the Trans-Siberian.  Most of the staff were gone, the restaurant itself dark and quiet, except for the faint sounds of dish-washing continuing on in the kitchen.  
   
And, of course, Nikolai.  Smoking at one of the booths, small table lamp illuminating a small pad of paper, pen in hand and vodka at his elbow.  
   
Cyrillic, there.  Ressler couldn't read it.  
   
"You find anything tonight?" Nikolai called, as Ressler headed for the back stairs that would take him up to bed.  
   
"Yeah," he said, stopping.  "Your guy was definitely grabbed.  Wasn't some kind of witness protection or anything like that."  
   
"Witness... ah, like Scotland Yard hide him?"  
   
"Wasn't that, no."  
   
Nikolai set the pen down, folding his tattooed hands on top of the table, eyes boring into Ressler.  "So where is he?"  
   
"I'm chasing it down."  
   
"I need Vershinin back."  
   
"I know.  I'm gonna get him."  He started walking again.  
   
"Donald!"  
   
He stopped.  
   
"Yeah?"  
   
"In your professional opinion, who can do thing like this?"  
   
Ressler swallowed, considering.  He'd been considering this the entire way back to the restaurant.  His knowledge of criminal groups in Europe was a hodge-podge of old FBI and INTERPOL intel from his taskforce days, combined with more personal, less objective experience.  But the major players were the same.  The major players were always the same.  And the major players who could - and more importantly, _would_ \- pull something like this off... well.  
   
"It's a very short list."  
   
"How short?" Nikolai pressed.  
   
He breathed in, out.  And said what he thought - because especially with that guy, that alias, African... "I wouldn't be confident enough to say," he lied, and kept walking.  On up the stairs, back to his room.  
   
Only to find Kirill passed out drunk against the door.  
   
"Dammit," Ressler muttered to himself, and picked the alcohol-sodden Russian up.  He had no idea where the man's own rooms were, and he wasn't about to start wandering the halls now.  He needed sleep.  If Kirill wanted to risk joining him, he really didn't give a shit what anybody else in the place thought.  
   
Kirill was too big to fit on the suite's little couch, though.  
   
Ressler laid him down on the bed, propped up with pillows so he'd sleep on his side, stripped out of his own London-damp clothes, and collapsed into the Egyptian cotton sheets himself.  
   
The darkness was welcome. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaaand this is the chapter where I ruin _Eastern Promises_. If you're one of those people who likes it or thinks they might like it.

There was nothing about this situation Aram liked.

Nothing.

But if he had to choose one thing he hated most about it, it had to be this; having breakfast with Keen down in the hotel lobby, like there was nothing at all wrong. Like he wasn’t working with Reddington and lying about it to - now - two different law enforcement agencies and the State Department.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” Keen was saying, plate piled high with fruit from the buffet line, coffee as yet untouched. “They called me out here because of the connecting to Reddington, but right now, I’m more worried about Ressler.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” Aram said quietly, and looked away; what happened to Ressler was the last thing in the world he wanted to think about. “So, umm, how have, uhh, you been?” 

Keen took the change in topic without so much as an eyebrow raise. “You know the story. Task force is gone, we all got reassigned...”

“The timeline never made much sense to me,” Aram said, stepping around the issue rather than take it head-on. “We had that one last case, who was that, the Decembrist?”

“Berlin.” She nodded.

“Yeah, we had that case, and Reddington came in maybe a month afterwards, had a half-hour discussion with Director Cooper, and that was it. Task force was stood down.” He poked at his eggs. Powdered, he could tell, but that wasn’t really why he had no appetite. “But you were moved well before that.”

Her jaw clenched, face shifting a bit. The last few years hadn’t been kind to her. Aram couldn’t help but notice. He remembered a sweet, open-faced young woman who’d walked into the Post Office for the first time, utterly confused as to what she was doing there. That first impression had been a lie, in and of itself - it wasn’t all Reddington’s influence that had brought out the darker side in her, the side that didn’t care about torturing suspects, making compromises in the name of the greater good. But she _had_ changed; he had changed her. 

And now, long after that had all ended... she looked tired. And old; much older than she was.

Aram wondered again what had happened with Tom. 

Nobody on the task force had ever gotten the full story.

“I was invited to leave,” she finally said, terse. “All Cooper would tell me about it was that with Fitch gone, Reddington’s influence higher up was diminished.”

“And they didn’t want you around?”

“I believe the exact words were... _too much of a risk, too much of a rookie_.” Keen snorted. “Rookie. Like I was still fresh out of Quantico. I was on that task force for over a year, more action than most agents see in their entire careers.”

Aram took a bite of his eggs; tasteless, as he’d thought. “I was happy to get out of there,” he said quietly, washing down the blandness with a sip of his tea. “Too many people dead.”

“It was fun, though,” Keen said.

He didn’t care at all for the regret in her voice. “So where’ve you been since?”

“Kansas field office, working white collar crime for the greater Midwest. Such as it is.” Bitterness, that’s what Aram got. He didn’t blame her. She speared another piece of fruit. “You?”

“NSA, mostly. It gets a little murky on the cyber end of things, who’s working what for who,” Aram says, lying. It had been his plan though, at one point. The FBI had been an in for that world, a way to get his foot in the door.

Until the Assistant Director of National Security had had his head blown off, video feed from the box active on Aram’s computer.

Too much death. He didn’t have the stomach for it. Didn’t like what the exposure to it was doing to him, to everyone around him. Aram wasn’t too proud to admit that to himself.

“NSA. That’s why it took me so long to find you,” she replied, nodding. “Makes sense.”

Aram took a deep breath. “Yeah.” He resisted the urge to pull his phone out, check the time. Not with an active call. Keen would see the green strip at the top of the screen. “So. When do we go back to... wherever it is they have you working?”

“Inspector Hall is coming by for me at nine. The Embassy’s sending a car for you around noon. Plan is to meet up for the interrogation.” 

“Interrogation?”

“Interrogation might be the wrong word. We’re picking one of his OCs, need to interview the guy. Seems Inspector Vershinin ran some pretty high-profile operations in here in London. They didn’t want to activate this particular resource, but...”

“No other choice?”

Keen nodded. “You know, the State Department? They were incredibly pissed, when I explained what was really going on with their supposed rogue employee. Reason I’m here, actually. My supervisor...” and she finished her coffee. “It’s been a long week here.”

“But you smoothed it over,” he pointed out, irritated. “By telling them the truth.”

She cocked her head. “You disagree with that call?”

He huffed, hands out. “We put that notice out there, like we did, because we didn’t want Ressler getting picked up as some kind of AWOL FBI agent. He’s a walking vault of national security information. Can you imagine what would have happened if he’d gotten caught in Turkey? Or Russia? Or...”

“But he wasn’t. He was flagged here, and not because he was a missing person, but because he’s an alleged associate of Raymond Reddington.” She shook her head. “Did you do that? Put that in, on Red’s request?”

“What?”

“Cause that’s the only thing I can think. That those two...”

And one of the pieces slid together in Aram’s mind. Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico, that op a couple years ago, where Reddington insisted on taking Ressler instead of Keen, when Ressler took that two week leave of absence right after, and...

He’d never thought to question it before.

“Aram?”

He shook himself. “Sorry, was just thinking about the case. Did you, umm, were you saying something?”

She huffed. “I was asking if you’d heard from him. Red. At all, I mean, about this. Did he contact you?”

“No,” he said. At least that wasn’t a lie. “He didn’t call me.”

“I did. I mean, I called him.” She was quiet. “When he left, he gave me a cell phone. Single use, he said. Three minutes, tops, on the call, then the thing was programmed to give out. If I ever needed him, really needed him, I’d have a way of getting in touch with him.”

“One call?”

“Yeah. And I used it for this. Asked him about what the connection was, why Ressler would listed as an associate through an alias he established. Why he would...do... something like that, for Ressler, of all people. I mean, the two of them hated each other.”

Aram’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he risked glancing down. A text, from Reddington. Had to be.

Two words.

_Jealous, Lizzy?_

Pocketing the phone again, he looked up at her. “That really such a problem?”

Her eyes narrowed, just a little, and it only old experience that told him she was lying too. “Only if he’s killing people for the man.”

Aram couldn’t help himself. It just came out. “You’re here cause you think it’s going to lead you back to Red.”

Keen was silent for a moment, and then gestured for a waiter to bring them more coffee. “Don’t tell me you don’t miss the task force days too.”

Aram waited, just in case, but the cell phone didn’t buzz again. He supposed he should lie to her, tell her what she clearly wanted to hear, but he just couldn’t do it. Too many bodies. Too many friends turned to meat. Why was it that she could live so easily with it? Mourn it, as if it was something wonderful, instead of the slow-rolling monstrosity that it had truly been?

 _This is why you’re not a field guy,_ Aram reminded himself and waited for the waiter to finish up.

“No, Keen,” he told her then. “I don’t.”

+++++

The most dangerous thing about the Trans-Siberian, Ressler had determined, was not the men who inhabited it, but the food produced by its kitchens.

Everything was fucking delicious.

Running down the car had been pathetically easy. Pathetic. It had taken Ressler a few hours to cross reference the list of 2006 black Audi A6s the greater London metropolitan area against both the tag number he’d pulled, and his own hunch - it felt like a Reddington job. He hadn’t been able to get it out of his mind all night, Kirill asleep in his bed, restless, until Ressler had pulled the Russian into his arms.

Reddington.

That meant not theft, but very liberal borrowing, usually from somebody whose primary residence or workplace was in another country. 

It also meant that Reddington was probably borrowing that secondary residence as well. 

He was a bastard that way.

They’d fucked him in more than a few of those.

“You want more?” Nikolai asked, not unkindly, from the other side of the lounge room that occupied most of the top floor of the restaurant’s building. A family room of sorts, Kirill had explained, normally the favorite haunt of his sisters and their children. But they were in Spain at the moment, chasing the sun, and the place belonged to no one.

With higher ceilings and loftier windows, the floor was flooded with light, even on a gray morning like the one outside. Wireless signal was better, too. Ressler had ensconced himself up there, ordered coffee, tucked into his work, once it had become clear to him that Kirill was not waking any time before noon. It was pleasant, in a way it should not have been; it was quite literally a den of thieves. Murderers. But there was something about the worn elegance of it, with its Victorian reproduction furniture and heavy damask drapes, that once again reminded him of Reddington.

“No,” Ressler said shortly, pulling himself out of old memories. He glanced once more at the address on his screen - the convergence of all his search criteria - and shut the laptop. “It was great. Thank the chef for me.”

“Chef know he does good, Head get too big, with praise,” Nikolai replied and came over, coffee pot in hand. Ressler had ordered food around ten; the mafia boss had come up with it, his own work tucked under an elbow. Without his usual suit jacket, rangy body wrapped in a dark red oxford instead, he almost looked like a human being. “How is search going?”

“Good,” he said shortly. “I have a lead or two, to check out today.”

“What kind of lead?”

“You hired me to do a job, Luzhin.”

“I also hire you to keep me informed. Or do you just like fucking my boss?”

And there it was. Out in the open. Nikolai poured them both more coffee, and pushed the remains of Ressler’s breakfast aside. 

“We’ve already had this conversation,” Ressler shot back, flat and disinterested. “You run everything, not Kirill, and I’m a _queer_ ” - he put a bit of Kirill’s accent into that word - “and none of that stops the heroin from flowing out of Kabul, so who gives a shit?”

Nikolai actually laughed, folding himself down into a chair. “What you think you know about our business?”

Ressler resisted the urge to hit himself; that was one of the first places he’d encountered Reddington, Afghanistan. Man had his hands deep in the international heroin trade, exporting both standard H and premium, old-world opium for consumption by the Asian elites. Hadn’t that been an interesting first look into the hedonism that existed at the top of everything? 

“Look,” he said, “both our countries have invaded that place, and the poppies are still growing, making somebody money. I know we’re not profiting off of it, or we’d be more than paying for that fucking war.”

“Yes, very stupid. Place is filled with beasts.” Nikolai nodded. “Pederasts.”

“What is up with you people and this hatred of gays?” Ressler asked - point blank, because why the hell not? A few days of Kirill’s self-loathing was starting to really get under his skin.

Nikolai was quiet. “Is bad. In prison, it is sign that others can control you. Not just about dirty sex, but who you are, as a man. That you are weak, failure.”

“I knew a guy, once, who’d say it takes a real man to take it up the ass.”

The Russian snorted and got up again, pacing. 

Ressler watched him for a moment, eyes dropping back again to his laptop. Cambridge, some posh new home in a new development. Ought to be interesting. Especially if Red was...

And then he heard Nikolai curse.

At one end of the lounge, above the velvet-upholstered chairs but below the crown molding, there was a bank of small TVs. Security feeds, from various places on the property - loading dock, kitchens, front entrance, main restaurant.

Feeds, one of which was was showing three black SUVs pulling up on the street in front of the doors.

He groaned. 

“They here for you, or me?”

“Don’t matter, they here,” Nikolai growled, standing. “Get out of here, finish job.  Let Vershinin go in public place. Phone me when done."  His fingers slipped into Ressler's pocket, depositing a phone number, and then he was off, headed downstairs.

Ressler watched the security cameras for a moment more, wanting to reassure himself that the cops weren’t about to do a shakedown of the entire house.  
   
Kirill arguing with the cops, gesticulating wildly, even as Nikolai stepped forward with his hands out.  The two of them, talking in what had to be Russian, as the - mercifully - small group of plainclothes agents fanned out around them.  
   
Just a flash of her hair, her face, but it was enough.

Keen.

 _You've wasted enough time,_ Ressler thought to himself and got up, throwing his jacket on and running rough fingers through his messy hair.   
   
Whatever she was doing in London, helping Scotland Yard with some mob case, it could wait.  
   
He had work to do.

+++++

Aram wasn’t sure what to think about the man who was brought in, the man who was currently smoking a hand-rolled cigarette in the middle of the dank room.  Easy and calm, like he owned the place.  
   
Inspector Hall hadn't said much about him.  Just marched him up through the offices maintained by the Russian Organized Crime division, running him through whatever booking process they had, then taking him down another floor to the basement interrogation area.   
   
There, Aram had had to leave his cell phone outside, the entire area locked down for whatever conversation was going to be taking place, and Hall had kicked everyone else out.  Not even the attending guard had been left on duty.  Aram wasn't even at the table, given a chair on the other side of the one-way glass, classified laptop at hand, in case anything needed to be checked or verified during the discussion.   
   
Aram was nervous.  But that guy, that guy, didn't seem phased by any of it.  Impeccably dressed, with slicked-back hair and an unmistakably air of arrogant authority, he would not have looked out of place in the executive lounge where Aram had spent most of yesterday.

Well, if it wasn't for the tattoos on his hands. Or the cuffs. Or the way that some of the people in the division had looked at him when he'd been drug past, hatred and fear warring in their expressions.

Everybody knew who he was, Aram reasoned, but very few of them knew he was an undercover.  
   
Hall cleared his throat, and turned on a tape recorder.  Leaned across the table to undo the UC's cuffs.  
   
Who promptly turned the tape recorder off again.  
   
"This is incredibly stupid, Brian," the man said.  "Bring me in?  Drag me out of restaurant in morning, when everyone can see..."

"Provides an excuse, Nikolai, something for you to tell Semyonov..."  
   
"Kirill is not problem for me.  I have him under control," Nikolai snapped, and glared at Keen, where she was standing in the back of the room.  "You take too much of risk.  Like her.  Who is she?  How you know she can be trusted?"  
   
"I'm FBI, American, and I'm going right back to America once we find Yuri Vershinin," she said evenly.   
   
"American FBI?"  He smiled, wane and lopsided.  "You have no idea what we do here in London.  Is different from America..."  
   
"And I assure you," she said, coming over and sitting down next to Hall, "I have worked highly sensitive cases before, undercover myself.  I won't blow your cover."  
   
Seemingly mollified, the UC nodded, and gestured to Hall, who handed over a file.   
   
Ressler's file.  
   
"As you know, Nikolai, we're activating every resource we have at our disposal, in our search for Yuri."  
   
"Is not enough," Nikolai said.  "I have been looking myself.  Have reason to believe that it is connected to dangerous man."  
   
"Who?" Keen asked.  
   
He glanced at her.  "You have not dealt with man like this."  
   
"Try me."  
   
"Raymond Reddington.  You hear of him, yes?"  
   
Aram sucked air; Keen leaned forward.  "Everyone's heard of Raymond Reddington.  But we're not here to talk about him, we're here to talk about Donald Ressler."  
   
"Donald Ressler, yes."  Nikolai set the folder down and held up a photo.  "This is Donald Ressler, yes?"  
   
"Yeah."  
   
"And you do not believe these two are connected, like it says in file?"  
   
Keen hesitated.  "I read the report from the Port Au Prince police department.  It does seem like Reddington was there on that night, that he single-handedly took down General Camio's entire compound, but I stress, single-handed.  Ressler had nothing to do with it."  
   
"It says injured State Department employee was taken to private clinic on north side of island after incident, with burns and bad nutrition."  Nikolai pulled the report, holding it up.  "I am reading English correct, da?"  
   
"That's what it says."  
   
"But you, you no believe this is what happen?"  
   
"Ressler's official bio is in there.  The unredacted version."  
   
" _Da_ , unredacted," Nikolai agreed easily, like she was a child he had no intention of indulging.   
   
Keen didn't miss it, frustration obviously growing.  "Agent Ressler spent most of his career hunting Reddington.  By all accounts, he hated the man."

“Does not mean they are not working together now.”  
   
"Nikolai, I don't wish to squash your insights here, but we are only concerned with his whereabouts as they connect to Yuri Vershinin's."  
   
"You think he take Yuri?  For Reddington?"  
   
"No, what?" Keen said, clearly frustrted now.  "Reddington has nothing to do with this.”

Laying the cigarette aside again, Nikolai folded his hands, eyes on her. “Then why would he, Ressler take Yuri? What is motive?”

“Payment,” Keen replied blandly, like he was an idiot for not realizing it. 

On the other side of the glass, Aram resisted the urge to sigh. He’d seen Agent Keen perform any number of interrogations, back in the Blacklist days, but he’d never seen her this off balance. That Nikolai guy was pushing her buttons, and pushing them on purpose. Why, though, he had no idea.

“And who pays?”

“Kirill Semyonov would be the obvious choice. Inspector Vershinin is the reason why his father is in prison...”

“I am reason, and Kirill know this,” Nikolai interrupted, sharp. “He did not hire man to deal with situation now.”

Hall snorted. “I have to agree with Agent Keen on this one. Kirill’s a psychopath, Nikolai. A guy who was going to drown his baby half-sister...”

“To save his Semyon, but he did not. Semyon in jail, I control organization, Kirill accept this.” Nikolai brushed it away and picked up Ressler’s photo again. “Why you look for this man, Agent Keen?”

“Because he’s a fugitive...”

“No. He fugitive, INTERPOL pick him up, turn him over to your embassy. No, you are here for other reason.”

Keen hesitated.

Hall jumped in.

"What have you been able to find out about this man? Anything?"  
   
"Yuri ask me to look into him. So I ask around. Blond American, look like model, find people?"  
   
Keen cocked her head. “Find people?"  
   
"Yes, he has reputation. Hunts people.  People who do not want to be found.  He is very good, this man with bird on back."  
   
"Bird?" Hall asked with interest.  "What kind of bird?"  
   
"Sea bird, I don't know type,” Nikolai said carelessly, and gestured, smoke trailing up and down.  "Is very large, they say."  
   
"Fascinating," the inspector replied, and started scribbling a few notes in the margins of one of the reports from the folder.  
   
Keen leaned back in her chair, arm over the back.  "You're telling me Ressler has a reputation?"  
   
Nikolai nodded, smoke curling between his fingers as he breathed in deep the last few draws off his cigarette.  “ _Da_ , as I say, he is very good." He smiled a little. “Preferred vendor, these days.”  
   
"So he just, what?  Finds people?  He doesn't kill them?"  
   
"No, killing draws attention.  This man, my contacts say he is very careful."  Nikolai pushed the picture back around.  "I suppose he would be, if FBI had him hunting Reddington."  
   
"Do you have reason to believe he grabbed Yuri under orders from Reddington?" Hall asked.  
   
Nikolai shrugged, and lit up fresh.  "If Reddington have Yuri, we will not see him again."  
   
"Reddington doesn't kill law enforcement personnel, and especially not ones who haven't been investigating him," Keen said, confident.  "He doesn't kill for no reason."  
   
"Maybe you don't know him that well."  He shrugged again.  "Maybe you don't know this Ressler so well either, _da_?”  
   
"Ressler was my partner," she snapped.  "I know him better than anyone, and he is not working for Reddington.  Again, he hated the man."

The undercover went back to the photo. “So. He is FBI. Top FBI, if he work with you, eh?”

“Was,” Keen said flatly. “He walked out, a while back.”

“How long?”

“Do you need to know that?”

“It would help me.”

Keen and Hall exchanged a glance. “You’re not to investigate this, Nikolai. Passive collection only right now, remember?”

“I have been on passive collection since Semyon was arrested. Is getting boring.”

“If you’re getting too bored, we could always send you back to Russia,” Hall said pointedly, like this was yet another conversation in a long, long argument.

Nikolai blew a smoke ring at the ceiling, utterly impassive. 

Aram pulled up a game of Solitaire on the room’s computer, trying to squash the urge to call Reddington, give him an update.

But the reunion with his cell phone was going to have to wait. 

Whatever was going on in there, it was going take a while.

+++++

Reddington hated the rain. Especially British rain, that miserable thing that fell on the land like dread itself. It crawled under his skin, the gray chill of it, and even the primal cheeriness of the fire roaring in the borrowed hearth couldn’t dissipate it.

He’d woken up that morning, to that drizzly Cambridge day, with anxiety lodged in his gut.

It was strange. 

It was an emotion he so seldom felt anymore.

But it was one that had been growing, day by day, since Aram had called with his news. Since Red had had any kind of confirmation that Donald was not, in fact, laying dead in some shallow grave in New Jersey, or a sewer in New York City. Like Lizzy had kept insisting. 

Donald, his Donald, had been far too resourceful for that.

His departure had been a shock, in more ways than one. Of course Red hadn’t been expecting - hadn’t been expecting it any more than he’d expected Lizzy to keep Tom prisoner out of some twisted need for control, and hadn’t that been a fun little clusterfuck to sort out?

That whole affair with Berlin had been a clusterfuck.

Red would have liked to pretend that it was the culmination of that which had prompted him to walk away from the task force. Berlin, his primary motivation for handing himself over in the first place. And that had been part of it, a major part of it, yes, but other things had drawn him in. Lizzy. 

Lizzy, and Donald Ressler.

Donny. 

A fascinating contradiction of a man, a seemingly white-bread Midwestern boy with a... a wildness that ran straight through to his soul. Through the misadventures of that little FBI black ops team, Reddington had watched Donny bud; he’d wanted to see him blossom, wanted to see him open up, become who he was, whoever that was.

So he’d pushed. And pushed. And pushed.

Never had it entered his mind, in any way, that his Donny would just... walk away.

It was maddening. And glorious.

But mostly, Red just wanted him back. Wanted his boy back. _Needed_ him back; in his bed, sleeping beside him, all that smoothed freckled skin that carried his mark. Wanted to run his hands across all that lithe muscle and watch those deep eyes open from dreams and remember, for himself, what it was to be human. 

And sure, if that meant going a little overkill - Dembe’s word, not his - with the only lead he’d had in over a year, well...

A click.

Unmistakable.

It was...

“It’s really this easy now to track you down now? Jesus, it’s been a month and it took me two goddamn days. What the fuck is Scotland Yard doing?”

Reddington pulled his attention away from the contemplation of the rain, of what to do with the man tied up in the basement of the place. 

Over to the doorway. 

Where a very damp ginger was pointing a very borrowed gun at him.

Sending a surge of very real emotions straight through him.

“Donny,” Reddington said, struggling a little to get the word out, and cocked his head. “This is a new record for you, isn’t it? Finding me?”

“I’m here for Inspector Vershinin. You can go to hell.”

Well... fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to get the full bare-knuckles reunion here, but this was a good place to leave it, I thought. For now. Heh.


	6. Chapter 6

He could have gone for subtle, Ressler. He could have not fucking dealt with it at all. Could have investigated the richly appointed townhouse on his own. Found Vershinin on his own; if Dembe was out, odds were good Reddington wouldn't have even noted the intrusion at all.

But he was nothing if not thorough. Maybe it didn't matter to him. that Red had grabbed some senior ranking British cop, but Ressler suspected it mattered very much to his client. 

Or maybe he was a bit of a masochist.

And maybe, just maybe-in a utterly unemotional way, of course-he'd wanted to see Red again. Understand... whatever there was to understand. 

Understand. And walk away forever.

Wasn't like Red had come looking for him.

Wasn't like there was something, anything, worth salvaging.

Normal people had relationships. Lazy afternoons in bed. Shitty dates. Overpriced meals at overrated restaurants. Mortages. Old, comfy clothes from the college days. Memories. Love.

Not them. Not in any future.

They had nothing.

Ressler had nothing.

Because the son of a bitch in front of him had taken it all away.

Reddington just stared evenly back, smiling that crooked smile of his. That smug, condescending smile, and Ressler had the sudden urge to pull the damn trigger. The gun wasn't a threat, not to a man like Red, and they both knew it.

"Would you like some lunch, Donny?" he said, folding up the newspaper he had been reading, laying it aside on a small side table. "I have  the most wonderful private chef here in London. Indian girl, from Mumbai, I believe. One taste of her food, and you'll swear you're back in the British Raj. Exquisite.  She was preparing a vindaloo, last I checked. Shall we go down to the kitchen and see how she's doing?"

Ressler wasn't prepared for the rush of emotion that hit like the first winds of a storm in the barn eves. n I've been through the kitchen," he said evenly. "Didn't see, or _smell_ a damn thing."

"Been through... oh," and Reddington laughed. "You probably broke in through the ground floor garden entrance. Inelegant, but I suppose it did the job."

He raised an eyebrow. "Like you aren't breaking and entering yourself?"

''Stop changing the subject, Donny. My point was that _that_ entrance leads to the show kitchen."

"Show kitchen?''

"You know, so when Mrs. Bakersfield has her weekly ladies luncheon, her private chef doesn't dirty the nice marble with prep work, and they can all gossip in pristine conditions. Real kitchen is down in the basement." Reddington stood. ''They don't have things like that in Montana. I would imagine."

"Only prep space we had was where you butchered the cows," Ressler replied, grinning, faking an ease he didn't feel. 

Reddington laughed and brushed his vest down, walking over to him. "Oh, I have missed that corn-fed sense of humor, Donny. Come on, let's go check on Asha, what do you say?"

It wasn't until Red actually clapped him on the shoulder, though, that Ressler realized how close he was - how close they both were, a proximity that spoke of that old, possessive familiarity, like Red owned him. still owned him, after all this time, all the bullshit and blood and...

Clicking the safety back on, Ressler - very gently - pushed Reddington's arm  away with his right hand.

And punched Reddington, hard as he could, right in the face with his left. 

It was a jab, hardly the best angle, but with years - fucking _years_ \- of rage behind it, it was more than enough. 

Blood fountained.

The force of it sent Reddington stumbling back, grabbing a chair back to stop the momentum. He touched his face, movements ginger, and sighed thickly at the bright red on his fingers. 

"That out of your system now? Or should I take my vest off, lest you thoroughly ruin it?"

Knuckles stinging, Ressler found himself breathing very hard. Too hard for words and Reddington must have caught it, because he made an irritated noise in the back of his throat and gestured at the door. 

He had blood on his teeth. 

"First aid kit's in the prep kitchen as well," he said.  

Which was how Ressler found himself in a rather industrial white-and-steel basement, watching a diminutive woman fuss over the stove,  while Red cleaned the blood off in the reflection of a mirror held up by Dembe. On the table between them, two steaming plates of basmati rice awaited their spiced lamb.

"Was I right or what?"Red said, voice off from the gauze stuffed up both nostrils. "Heavenly."

Ressler snorted. "You can't smell a damn thing right now."

"You have no imagination, do you Donny?"

He leaned forward. "I hate it when you call me _Donny_. Like I'm a child. Or a pet."

"Donny..."

"I am not either," he hissed, remembering those words Reddington had spoken to him to that sailing cruise, forever ago, it seemed. About how some men needed... "I do not need a master."

"I seem to remember a young man who used to beg me for permission to come."

Ressler swallowed down the rush of memories; Reddington fucking him in the shower; Reddington, watching him masturbate, telling him exactly where to touch himself; Reddington, blowing cool air over his cock and holding him down as he squirmed... 

"That doesn't mean I wanted to be owned."

Reddington gave him a very odd look. "Then there was the matter of a certain tattoo..."

''Had it," Ressler began, and stopped as the chef brought over a huge platter of the promised Vindaloo, nodding at Reddington before he waved her off. Ressler jabbed a thumb at her back. "Let me guess. Doesn't speak English?"

"Not a word," Reddington replied serenely. "Dembe, would you mind helping her with the dishes?  She is so tiny, wouldn't want her drowning in the sink."

"Course not, Mr. Reddington."

And, just like that, they were alone again.

''What were you saying about the tattoo, now?" The blood was just beginning to dry on the master criminal's shirt; dull brown stains appearing around the shrinking pools of oxygen-rich red. Ressler couldn't take his eyes off it. 

Had it removed," he lied. Flat, unemotional. 

Reddington dished himself up a huge portion of curry, quiet for a moment. "Shame. It was fine work."

"You don't own me, Red."

"No. Never wanted to own you."

"Then..."

"Wanted to see what you'd do if somebody set you free."

That wasn't at all something Ressler expected to hear, and it caught him off guard. "Bullshit."

"What are you doing these days? Staying busy?"

Helping himself to a serving of lamb - because he was _not_ going to lose this fucked up whatever - Ressler pretended to think about the question. "You might have heard I quit the Bureau."

Red barked a laugh."I did hear that, in fact. From Lizzy."

"How is she doing?" Ressler asked, genuinely curious, and immediately regretting it. For all he'd liked Keen-the rookie Keen, that girl who was so eager to make a difference, catch the bad guys-that wasn't a discussion he really wanted to have. Not with Reddington. 

Especially not with Reddington.

But instead of the normal fond, secretive little smile his former quarry got, whenever the subject of Keen came up, Ressler was surprised to see Reddington's face collapse.

"As I understand it, she's having a lovely time at the Kansas field office."

It was so strange, Ressler had to ask. "Last I heard, she was here in London." 

"And where did you hear that?"

"You spent years tracking her, following her, you can't tell me..."

"Lizzy and I have parted ways, Donald."

He crossed his arms. "Why don't I believe that?"

''Believe what you like, but truth is, the FBI and I are no longer on speaking terms. Lizzy included." Red fussed a bit with his bloodied tie. "Your former employer's usefulness to me was extinguished with Berlin."

"You're telling me they let you just walk away?"

"You managed it, didn't you?"

Ressler, picking at his food up until that moment, gave up all pretense of casual conversation and pushed his plate away. "Well, this has been a fun little reunion, but I do have work to do. Where's the Inspector?"

Reddington's casual tone hardened. "Why do you need him?"

"I was hired to find him."

"Hired by who?"

"Does it matter?"

"I'm not going to just hand him over to you, Donald, just because you show up at my doorstep..."

"Technically it isn't your doorstep..."

"I'm not interested in technicalities. You want him, I want payment of my own." It was terse, all business. Vintage ice-cold Red. Twisted Ressler's stomach into knots.

He nodded anyway.

"Intel."

"Yes."

He thought about it for a moment; probably wasn't professional, volunteering that nugget of information. But what the hell? He was really tired of being called a queer.  "Nikolai Luzhin."

"The psychotic Vor who runs Russia's less savory trading practices here in London?"

"Not quite that psychotic." But Ressler shrugged. "Sure. Whatever. Where's Yuri Vershinin?"

"Master bedroom closet." Reddington dug a hand into a pocket, producing a small set of keys. "Go ahead. I got out of him what I needed."

More than a little supicious, Ressler took the set carefully. hating the way he had to lean forward, off balance, in order to do so. "And what was that?"

Reddington made a little noise in the back of his throat, the effect somewhat ruined by the gauze up his nose. 

"You.'' 

And he dug back into his lunch, like he was the only man in the room.

There was something infuriating in all that, the dismissal, the derision. But Ressler fought down the white-hot furnace blast of anger; arguing with the human slime in front of him was the last thing he wanted to be doing. 

Still. 

It just came out.

"How awful for you, me not being around for you to fuck,'' Ressler said bitterly.  His former lover, target, enemy didn't look up. Just kept eating. 

It was rage-inducing, and it shouldn't have been, and that only made the former FBI man madder. 

"But that's the kind of man you are, _Raymond_ ," he continued, anger mounting with every word. "You treat the world like it's your own goddamn puppet show, everyone in it doing exactly what you want them to do, fuck what they want for themselves, and you can't stand one of your little sex dolls cutting the strings and fucking leaving before you could get around to throwing it away."

Reddington didn't even try to stop him as he walked away.

Fucking typical.

Vershinin was exactly when he was promised, though. Master bedroom closet, denuded of all clothing, nothing in the space but a small plastic nightlight, glowing red in the gloom. The man clearly hadn't shaved - much less bathed - in weeks. The closet stank.

"Yuri Vershinin?" Ressler asked.

Lips set tight, hand held up against the light, the man peered back at him. His eyes were sharp, hard. What was it with Russians? "Who are you?"

If it had been an FBI op, Ressler could have said all the right things. _We're here for you. It's over. You're going to be okay. I'll have the paramedics look you over._ Could have said a lot of things. Had them be true. 

Instead, he lied.

+++++

Apparently, the Brits had similar rules about arrests and interrogations and public defenders. 

And they'd all been kicked out of the room by the desk sergeant, when the grim-faced man from the Russian embassy showed up. Ramage had shown up about the same time, muttering curses and making straight for the Chief Inspector's office.  

"Why does he need a lawyer?" Aram asked. They'd retreated to Inspector Hall's own work area, coffee and sandwiches from the first floor deli in hand. He knew he needed to call Reddington, give him an update, but at the same time, Aram hadn't been looking very hard for an excuse.

Hall tapped his pencil on the top of an immaculate desk, parsing through his notes from the session. "Luzhin, or whatever his real name is, is here at the behest of the Russian government. Yuri trusts him implicitly, swears he's an honorable man, good agent, but..."

Keen unwrapped her egg salad. "He's still FSB."

"He's here because of the stars on his chest. If not for that, I'd have had him sent home a long time ago. Yuri was insistent upon keeping him in play."

"So that man from the embassy is what, his handler?'' she asked.

"That is my  best guess too."

"How does that all work?" Aram asked. "That kind of intelligence sharing?"

Hall huffed. "With as little sharing as possible."

"Must be quite the challenge, Keen observed around a mouthful of sandwich.  "But the thing I can't figure out is what this has to do with Ressler. Do we have any indication he's been working for the Vory v Zakone? Maybe Yuri was investigating a connection and Ressler grabbed him?"

"To do what? Kill him, dump the body?" Aram asked pointedly. 

"Could be," Hall said. Keen gave a little half-nod of agreement.

"Agent Keen, this is Don we're talking about. He wouldn't hurt a cop."

"I think we have to assume it's a possibility," she replied slowly. 

He stood, sensing an exit, angry to boot. "I'm going to hit the restroom, I think," he said stiffly. 

But he wasn't expecting the answer he got, once he got Reddington on the phone. 

"If you're calling about Ressler, the situation's changed."

"Changed?" he hissed, cramped in the tight bathroom stall. "Changed how?" 

"Thank you for your help, Aram. I suggest you look to your exit strategy, before the State Department suit realizes you aren't actually FBI."

"Wait, Mr. Reddington, I'm not going anywhere. I came to find Don and..."

"Goodbye, Aram."

The phone went dead before he could protest any further. And Aram was left with the silence, alone in an unfamiliar place, once again, the last person to know anything.

Keen might have missed the task force days, but he sure as hell didn't.  

Aram was almost relieved when he returned to find that the Russian ambassador himself had called to order Nikolai be cut loose.

+++++

The undercover was still in the interrogation room, smoking yet another cigarette. Ramage and that guy from the embassy were arguing quietly outside, but stopped as Inspector Hall approached.

“You believe this shit?” the American State Department official scoffed.

“I am less than thrilled about this turn of events,” Hall replied archly, “but anything for the FSB.” He opened the door, just poking his head in. “Come on then. Let’s get you out of here.”

It took forty-five minutes to get him processed out, Nikolai blank, expressionless through the entire thing. Hall had grudgingly agreed to take him back to the restaurant, or at least, get him close enough. It was a concession the cops tended to make in the borough for the organization; _appearances and all that,_ the inspector had sighed.

But just as they pulled out in the afternoon traffic, a cell phone rang.

And rang, and rang.

"I told you to take the battery out," Hall growled, but Nikolai just held up a hand, finger to his lips, and put it on speaker.

"What'd the cops want?" demanded the voice on the other end.  
   
Aram felt the floor fall away under his feet; he knew that voice, it, it was...  
   
"Question me about Vershinin," Nikolai said casually, as if he was all alone in the car, and gestured to Keen, taking her note pad.  He glanced at his phone and put it back to his ear, talking as he wrote.  "I know nothing, so they let me go once lawyer arrives."  
   
"About fucking time.”  
   
Nikolai ripped off the page, handing it to Aram.  A phone number, the number Ressler was calling from, and for a terrible, awful moment, Aram couldn't think of what the hell he was supposed to do with it.   
   
"Aram," Keen whispered softly.  
   
And he remembered.  
   
He had his laptop in hand in  
   
"Do you have the package?"  
   
"Take me off speaker."  
   
"Am driving.  Do you have package?"  
   
"Yeah, I have it.  Dropping it off at the nearest underground station..."  
   
"No," Nikolai said quickly, eyes on Inspector Hall, who was holding up his pad, _GET HIM IN THE OPEN_ hastily scrawled on it.  "I want him myself."  
   
"This is not what we discussed."  
   
"Extra ten grand.  If cops think I do this, I want him to know is not me."  
   
"Nikolai, I'd love to oblige, but..."  
   
"Fifteen."   
   
But he hung up.  The line went dead.  
   
"Aram?"  
   
"Hang on," he said, fingers flying faster than he could talk.  "Have to find the tower, cross-reference with the leasing company's records, get the GPS location, and... aha, there.  Call came through here."  He pulled the location up on Google Maps, hiding the program he had to activate to run the hack; back when he was still working with the FBI, they'd had that kind of access natively, one of the many back room deals between the goverment and the major ISPs.  He suspected they'd expect the same out of him now.  "At a DAS location... in... Cambridge."  
   
"DAS?"  
   
"Small cell, limited range.  The antenna's probably concealed in a church steeple, something like that.  Means he has to be within a five, six block radius of that location.  Parks, main streets, what else?" Aram muttered to himself, looking over the list of possible drop points. public. In range of that tower. Five, ten, fifteen minutes travel time, traffic permitting, and... "I've got it!"

"What? Aram, what?"

Keen was staring back over the headrest at him.

He held up his laptop triumphantly, thumb tapping the spot. “Cambridge University Hospital."

"Aram..."

"No, think about it. Vershinin has been missing for almost a month. He's probably in pretty bad shape. So, Ressler takes him somewhere public, somewhere where his target won't die before he has a chance to collect his fee." Aram leaned forward. ''It has to be the hospital."

Hall considered it. "It's a terribly large risk, don't you think?"

"He doesn't know anyone's after him, right? What's he got to worry about?  Us finding him on surveillance footage a month from now? Inspector Vershinin's going to report him anyway..."

For a breathless moment, it hung. 

Then Nikolai nodded. “Is good lead. Inspector Hall, you should call it in.” He popped the handle on his door. “I take taxi.”

“Thank you,” Hall said tersely, and, lights switched to blaring, tore through the next intersection, radio in hand. 

Aram glanced back at the ever-smaller figure they’d left behind. The Russian undercover wasn’t moving from the street where he’d gotten out, despite the steady drizzle of rain. Watching them. 

A black monolith, amidst the gray of London stone and sky.

+++++

"I know who you are, you know, Mr. Irvington. I know what you've done and where you come from."

And it hit Ressler then-Vershinin was about to launch into one of those negotiating-for-ones-life dialogues. He adjusted the rear-view mirror for better visibility of the back seat. 

"I was hired to bring you in alive, Mr. Vershinin, and that is exactly what I intend to do. That alright with you?"

''Where are we going, then?"

"Hospital," he replied blandly. "I've never known Reddington to physically torture anyone he didn't fully intend to kill, but based on the way you look, I'd wager he's been fucking with your diet pretty severely. Not to mention the psychological strain of prolonged sensory deprivation and those CIA tactics he favors so much." 

It wasn't bullshit; the Brit in the back seat was far from the only victim of Reddington's he'd scraped out of a hole somewhere over the years. Vershinin looked like hell warmed over, too, drowning in a too-big track suit that had been the only thing Ressler could find for him. He was emaciated, pale, almost jaundiced, startlingly blue eyes sunken deep. "You need medical attention."

The man sighed, eyes closing. ''Who hired you? Who was that on the phone?"

"Just because you're not gagged now doesn't mean you can't be." It got him a weary glare, to worn to be any kind of a threat. Ressler shook his head. "We're almost there. Can the bullshit. Had enough manipulation for one day," he added, muttering to himself.

But, of course, cop that he was, Vershinin didn't. 

"What are you to him, Donald?"

"Using familiarity to build trust so I'll be more willing to give you the answers you want," Ressler shot back. "That's a no-go, Yuri."

"It was all he wanted out of me. Information about you."

Bizarre, that. Bizarre enough that Ressler considered asking. "What interest does Scotland Yard's Russian desk have in a humble private detective from the US?"

"None," was all the reply he got, and the hospital was there. Next block up.

Ressler pulled the car to a stop on a side street."This is how this works, Yuri. You get out here. You Walk to the door. I see you go in, I leave. You call whoever you want to call, won't matter. I'll be gone, you get a doctor, everyone wins."

Yuri, to his credit, didn't say a goddamn thing about it. 

Just opened the back door and set both bare feet down on the wet cobblestones.  Pushed out of the car. 

Ressler thought he might have heard a _thank you_ , but that too was swallowed by the rain. 

He waited, eyes on Inspector Vershinin's shambling form, lost in thought. Reddington had grabbed the guy because of him? Didn't make any sense. Why? What the fuck did any of it have to do with him? Hell, he'd spent almost a year in Eastern Europe, with its corrupt cops and massive criminal elements. Why not try something there? Why risk the Brits, with their heavily surveilled cities and stringently enforced border protocols? What had been the gain here?

Vershinin had vanished from view. Time to get moving. Ressler threw the car into drive and made to pull out into the main street beyond. But before he could get tires on tarmac, a police car screamed out in front of him, sealing off the exit.

Cold certainty flooded his veins, and Ressler yanked the shifter to reverse. nearly popping the clutch in his haste to accelerate backwards.

Nearly smashing in the front of the black unmarked SUV roaring up behind,  lights flashing above the dash.

Sirens, siren everywhere. Growing. Lighting up the mist rising from the streets on either side of the alley.

That, that was a terrifying movement.

But seeing who jumped out of the left passenger side door, sidearm drawn?

At that, well, there was nothing to do but put his head down and his hands up and laugh.


	7. Chapter 7

It was more unsettling than Ressler had expected, sitting in the interrogation room, cuffed to the table with two feet of chain. One-way glass concealing all the watching eyes. 

Waiting. Just waiting.

For at least two hours, he figured. Maybe more. It meant the Inspector on his case was either a moron - why in the hell give a suspect like him, one who was infinitely familiar with law enforcement procedures, time to solidify his story? - or was hoping to rattle him.

Ressler suspected the latter.

Keen would know what he knew, what he’d done. He wouldn’t have been assigned a low priority. He wouldn’t be handed off to somebody who was just competent at their jobs.

But he didn’t really care what Scotland Yard wanted him to do or feel or think.

They’d failed to supply a decent reason to him, as they’d loaded him into the SUV, as to how they’d known where he was going to be. How they found him. He was fucked, he knew that, especially if they knew about Greece - or Milan, or Turkey, or any of a half-dozen other missing persons cases he could probably be tied to. He’d done enough; maybe somebody had picked up his trail. So him being there, then, could either be the result of a long, protracted manhunt, the signs of which he’d never detected...

Or something else was going on.

Ressler folded his hands on the table and let his eyes wander the room. Take it in, like he was capable of doing something about it. Forcing himself to think.

There’d be a way out. It was a matter of finding it, exploiting it, and doing it explosively enough that nobody could stop him.

But that still didn’t answer the question of why he’d been picked up in the first place.

Or why Keen was there.

Keen. 

She was out there, had to be.  Behind the glass.  Watching him, judging him, making notes.  Probably.  She was a good profiler, always had been.  He could give her that much.  And in a way, that was nerve-wracking; part of profiling was being able to make determinations without the whole story.   
   
Like that story Reddington had told him, years ago - and Ressler wasn't sure why it came to mind, just that it did.  That sailboat incident, back in his midshipman days, how he'd watched a friend succumb to infection.  How he'd almost died himself.  None of that had been in any record Ressler was ever able to dig up.  A story, probably, the mans' classmates knew, but he'd interviewed several of them when he'd been put on the original taskforce.  The few who hadn't slammed the door in his face - mostly, the ones who were already out of the service - hadn't mentioned a thing about it.  It could have been bullshit, but it had explained a lot about who the man was.  
   
Keen didn't have those pieces on him.  Recent things, past things, the things that mattered.  At least, Ressler assumed she didn't, not working in a Kansas field office, far from the bright lights of DC. But then, he'd gotten picked up, on the street, in plain daylight, too soon and far too fast for it to be a knee-jerk response to Vershinin's return.  Somebody had been tracking him.   
   
Somebody was interested.  
   
Ressler wasn't arrogant enough to think he had anything explosive about the US government, secrets to sell.  The FBI would know that, would have requested a basic search history from the NSA on his classified systems' access.  He'd stolen nothing on his way out, downloaded nothing, emailed nothing.  He wasn't a treasure trove of national security secrets.  There was no such thing as going AWOL from a law enforcement agency.  
   
So they likely wanted him for something recent.  
   
He thought about Greece.  
   
He hoped Keen didn't know anything about that, either.  
   
"Mister Irvington," Inspector Hall said, coming into the room, files in hand and a tech crew at his back, "it's good to see you."  
   
"I don't recognize that name," Ressler replied blandly, heart almost skipping a beat - oh yes, he remembered that particular alias.  Why the fuck was that in play?  How'd they even know about it?  
   
"You don't?  I thought it was yours."  
   
"Never heard it, much less used it, before in my life."  
   
"Ah.  I see."  Inspector Hall pulled out the chair on the opposite side of the table, setting a cup of coffee down in front of REssler, as he spread out his own thick folio of case files. “Agent Keen tells me you take it black, no sugar.”

“That was very nice of her to remember.”

“I must confess, Mr. Ressler, I am absolutely fascinated by you, and...”  
   
Ressler folded his arms, ignoring the coffee for the moment.  "We already had this talk in the car.  We both know I'm a former fed, we both know my history, and we both know that I walked off the job without a word to anyone nineteen months ago.  None of that is illegal.  So cut the bullshit.  What am I being held on?"  
   
"Well, there is a kidnapping charge..."  
   
"Which not even Inspector Vershinin can validate without lying.  I pulled him out of that house, drove him to the hospital.  Not a crime."  
   
"How'd you get in?  If it wasn't you who put him there?"  
   
"Picked the lock on the ground floor garden door.  Take the lock apart, you'll find scratch marks consistent with that little kit you pulled off me."  Ressler huffed.  "Now you're thinking you could hold me on breaking and entering, but the home owners won't press charges when I tell them what's happened."  
   
"Who says you get to talk to the home owners?"  
   
He leaned forward.  "Who says I haven't?"  
   
Inspector Hall laughed a little, and started jotting notes on a pad inside his folio.  "Indeed, I suppose you very well may have," he chuckled, continuing to write.  "But let's go back to my first question.  This alias of yours, you say you've never seen nor heard of it before?"  
   
"No."  
   
"It's very good, you know.  Bank records, school transcripts, a misdeamenor offense for smoking pot back in high school... do you do drugs, Donald?  You mind if I call you Donald?"  
   
"Don's fine."  
   
"So, do you do drugs?"  
   
"No."  
   
"Ever?"  
   
Ressler rolled his eyes.  "How about you cut to the part where, having not answered all of your simpering, softball questions, you send in Keen to be a bitch in hopes of rattling something loose from me?"  
   
Hall closed his folio.  "That what you want?"  
   
"What do you want?  Because I've done nothing wrong."  
   
"Calling a former colleague a bitch... what'd she do?"  
   
It sounded like an honest question.  One a cop wouldn't ask at an interrogation.  Which meant it was exactly the kind of question a cop would ask at an interrogation, and Ressler had to hand it to Hall, he had a pretty good poker face.  "She stabbed Raymond Reddington in the neck with a pen one time," he answered blandly.   
   
"And when did she do that?"  
   
"The first week he was on the task force with us.  Evidently, he pissed her off and her response was to jab a pen into the vein of one of the most valuable assets we..."  
   
And the one-way glass turned off.  
   
Revealing - yes - Keen standing there, furious.  Next to a man in a suit who Ressler didn't recognize, who was stepping out, phone to his ear.  
   
But Aram was there, too, and that, that took Ressler completely by surprise.  
   
"What are you talking about, Ressler?" she snapped over the intercom, thumb depressed on the mic's talk button.  "I'm not recalling that incident."  
   
He tried not to react to Aram’s presence, sticking with Keen instead.  "You know, it was after Reddington walked into the FBI headquarters and surrendered himself on the condition of only talking to you.  I'm sure you remember that.  I showed up at your house that morning, you were terrified when we brought you into the black site to talk to him?  He kept calling you Lizzy?  I mean, we were sure that you knew him..."  
   
Was she worried? She looked worried. Good. He wondered what she’d told them, why they’d brought her here, how they’d even found her, rotting away in Kansas. “Stop bullshitting, Ressler.  That's not going to help your case."  
   
"Reddington," Ressler told Hall, ignoring her completely, "once sent me a guy's head in a box, the head of the guy who killed my girlfriend.  Pretty fucked up.  But Agent Keen?  He bought her this dress one time, red, really gorgeous, she looked great in it..."  
   
Hall cocked his head, pen tapping on the notepad.  "Sounds pretty far fetched.  Why would a man as powerful as Raymond Reddington willingly give himself up to the FBI?"  
   
Ressler glanced at the room beyond the glass; Keen was gone.  "Well, he sure as fuck didn't do it for me."  
   
The door banged open.  Keen.  He leaned back in his chair, smiled at her.  "Oh hey, Lizzy."

“It’s Agent Keen,”she said, irate. He couldn’t tell if that was the fake kind some people like to pull on for this sort of thing, or genuine. Keen hadn’t always had the best grasp on her emotions. 

“I’m touched you remember, Keen,” he said, giving her a smile.

She sat down in the car next to Hall, folding her hands, fussy and precise as a cat cleaning her claws after a trip to the litter box. “No reason this has to be unpleasant, Ressler.”

“I’m handcuffed to a table,” he pointed out, and raised one of his hands as he reached for his coffee, letting the chain jingle. “How much more unpleasant can it be?” And before she could answer, he waved it off, looking to the inspector. “And I’m sorry, sir, what exactly did you say I was being charged with, again?”

Keen glared at him. “Ressler, let me be clear. This is not an Internal Affairs investigation, nor is it a polite inquiry. The Crown could very well extradite you to Greece, if they don’t like your answers. I suggest you cooperate fully.”

He smiled blandly at her. “Why don’t you stop making threats and turn the cameras on? I’d like to know why I’m being detained.”

“You are not in control here...”

“So why don’t you make an effort to manage the situation better?” He cocked his head, directing his words to the glass. He sipped at his coffee again, picked at the rolled paper edge of the cup, and turned his attention back to Hall. “I’d like to know what charges I’m being held on.”

“Ressler, if you haven’t noticed, you are on the other side of the table today,” Keen snapped. “You lost your badge a long time ago.”

“I do seem to remember tossing it in the Hudson...”

“Perhaps we should begin there,” Inspector Hall interrupted, and spread out one of the files. “Why you, a highly respected special agent, walked out of the FBI without a word to anybody.”

“Last time I checked, quitting a law enforcement organization is not a criminal act.”

“It is when you take national security secrets with you,” Keen replied.

He rolled his eyes. “Like what?”

“What I find truly interesting about this, Mister Ressler, is this State Department alias of yours.” Inspector Hall slid him a sheet of paper; an INTERPOL print-out. “Why an official agency in your country’s government? Why something this high-profile?”

Ressler slid it closer to himself, looking it over carefully. He didn’t recognize many of the details in it.

“I didn’t create that alias,” he replied, and slid the paper back across the table. “Never used it before in my life.”

“I have reliable intelligence from a Haitian source that says a man of your description checked in at a private hospital on the north side of the island, and remained there for over a week.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

Keen shoved him another piece of paper; artist’s sketch, he realized. A smaller copy of the master pattern that had been painstakingly inked on his back. How the fuck...

"What would happen if I made you take your shirt off?  Would there be a big tattoo there?  Of a sea bird?"

He pushed the paper back. "I believe that would be an illegal search. Am I right about that, Inspector Hall?" 

"I could get a warrant," the Brit said blandly.  "A man fitting your description reportedly killed the son of a Turkish diplomat."  
   
"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Hall nodded.  "Of course not."  
   
"Why don't we go back to Haiti?  Or rather, should I say, the Caribbean?  A man, also fitting your description, under the name of Donald Irvington, was a passenger on sail cruise, a man who disappeared off that boat two days before he was scheduled to disembark."  Keen handed him a news story.  "The captain was found dead in his home in New Orleans a month later.  Professional hit.  Why'd Reddington do it?"  
   
"Who says Reddington did it?"  
   
"Reddington was a classmate of his.  I spoke to his widow myself."  
   
It came together; why she knew all this, what she must have been doing with all her free time chasing small-time white collar crime cases in the Midwest.  

"You've been keeping tabs on him," Ressler said, snapping his fingers.  "Reddington.  You've been investigating him still, all this time."  
   
She didn't even blink.  "So what?"  
   
"So what?  Keen, if you've been using Bureau resources to conduct an investigation into Reddington, for personal reasons..."  
   
"Let's go back to the Caribbean.  You said you've never used this alias before, know nothing about it?"  
   
"That's right."  
   
"I have security footage," she said, and pulled a couple of glossy 8.5-by-11s out of the file, "that puts you in the Port Au Prince private jet terminal at the same time as Reddington.  In fact..."  
   
She flipped to the next one.  
   
His blood went cold.  
   
It was Reddington.  And him.  Kissing in the hallway. And Ressler remembered that moment suddenly, in perfect clarity.  Reddington smoothing a hand across his still-healing back, murmuring a question in his ear about how he felt, if he would be okay sitting for the fight back to DC.  
   
 _I might lay down in that bunk you've got._  
   
 _Donald, you lay down, and I can't promise you're going to stay stretched out on your stomach._  
   
"That's you, isn't it?"  
   
"Could be any man of my general height and build," he replied, knowing his heart was definitely beating faster, wondering if that camera had that next-gen technology on it, that infrared feature that helped detect lying.  "What difference does it make?"  
   
"Is this you?"  
   
"Kissing Reddington?  I think I prefer your idea of stabbing him in the neck with a pen."  
   
"Stay on topic.  Is this you?"  
   
He shuffled through them, flicking through them one by one.  "No."  
   
She smiled at him, and pulled the photos back.  "Okay, how about the tattoo?"  
   
"Get your warrant, and you'll see just how unscarred my back is."  
   
"The albatross has a great deal of symbolism for sailors."  
   
"Reddington hasn't been a sailor in a very long time."  
   
"So you admit he could have something to do with this?"  
   
"No, he has nothing to do with any tattoo on my back, if indeed, such a tattoo actually exists."  
   
"I want to read you something," Keen said, holding up a hand.  "The albatross is perhaps the most legendary of all birds.  In the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the albatross is seen to be a symbol of good luck amongst the crew, and then, when killed, becomes a grave curse on the man who shot him."  
   
"You get that off Wikipedia?"  
   
"Don't you think it's possible that Reddington put that on you, as warning to others, that you are his property?"  
   
He snorted, and looked past her, to the window.  "What is this, Inspector?" he yelled.  "I thought I was being held for kidnapping?!"  
   
The glass didn't turn off, but the intercom did crackle into life.  "You're to answer all of Agent Keen's questions directly."  
   
Ressler considered asking for that public defender at that moment, but decided against it.  No reason to antagonize anyone but Keen; if she broke first, he figured, he'd be off and she'd be sent packing.  
   
"Can we assume, Ressler, that you and Reddington have a history together that extends beyond..."  
   
"Our professional acquaintence?" he finished for her, and smiled.  Fuck all of this.  He wasn't going to sit here and take her shit, just because she still had a badge and he didn't.  Keen controlled nothing, never had.  Certainly not him.  "You mean, were we getting together after hours?  Was I going to him for advice, or seeking his counsel?  Asking his help with my cases or getting involved with his ex-wife?  Like that?"  
   
The color started draining from her face, but she didn't budge.  "Just answer my question."  She sounded a lot less sure of herself.  
   
"No," he replied.  "I was not his... whatever you think I was."  
   
"How about your drug dealer?  Some of those bottles we found in your house after you left had no verifiable pharmacy information on them."  
   
"I did almost lose my leg.  Protecting him."  
   
"For yourself."  
   
"For the FBI.  He was an asset we couldn't afford to lose."  
   
"I thought you said you hated him."  
   
"You're right, I absolutely should have let Anslo Garrick kill him.  You have no idea how much I wanted to watch him die," he shot back, and twisted it as hard as he could.  "I would love it if his body washed up on the beach tomorrow."  
   
"Wow, Ressler," Keen replied with mock surprise.  "That's a lot of anger there.  What'd the man ever do to you?"  
   
"He was a traitor."  
   
"And what are you?"  
   
"A guy who got sick of watching you and a Moussad agent make a mockery of the justice system."  Ressler wasn't really sure what he hoped to accomplish with that.  It was more anger than anything else; that hot, sick headiness that came from the need to win the fight at hand.  It felt good.  Reckless.  He held in in check as best he could.  "Along with that serial killer fuck we were working with."  
   
"He was not a serial killer."  
   
And there it was.  
   
She'd just handed him the entire thing.  
   
Ressler struck.  
   
"Last I heard, he'd cut off all contact with the FBI, because of you.”  
   
Off balance, she said exactly what he knew she'd say.  
   
"It had nothing to do with me."  
   
"Sure it did.  If he left, it was because of you."  
   
"You have no idea..."  
   
He took a wild guess.  "Was it Tom?  What, did you kill him or something?  Reddington, couldn't handle the sight of his precious little protege with blood on her hands?"  She was stone-faced.  Damn. He ratcheted it up.  "Or was he just done using you?  Got his Berlin guy, eliminated the threat, no more need for his impressionable rookie?"  
   
Keen's mouth opened and shut a few times, and then, as if with great effort, she leaned forward, hands on the table, eyes on him. Pupils twitching a little.  He could practically smell the rage.  "He wasn't using me," she said in a very low, very calm voice.  
   
"Of course he was," Ressler replied, putting every ounce of condescension he could manage into his voice.  He was way out on a limb, working on nothing but anger and thin suspicions, and he had to land something, had to push her completely over the edge. It was the only way he was getting out of here. "He was using all of us.  But he knew that everybody who'd already been working on his case, everybody who had anything to do with his case, who'd seen the shit they redact for Quantico, wouldn't have a goddamn thing to do with him.  We wouldn't have cooperated.  So he gets you, some newbie, a girl, I might add, who'll see his manipulation as affection..."  
   
"Ressler..."  
   
"... who thought she was stepping into something special, because, ooh, it’s a black site...”  
   
"Tom was put in my life because of Reddington, a long time before..."  
   
"So what?  He's thorough.  He'll stalk a target for years.  For all you know, Liz, he hung you out as bait and Berlin took it.  Just cause he was obsessed with you, doesn't mean he cared about you.”  
   
She folded her arms, drawing herself back up to full height.  "So what?" she finally asked, colder than he had ever heard her.  "He cares about some junkie ex-FBI agent?"  
   
“I didn’t realize we were competing for his affection.” He finished his coffee; it was cold. He could see her temper mounting, cocked and ready.  "He doesn't give a shit about me.  But at least I'm not the one who fell in love with the guy who killed my father."

Her reaction was immediate, violent - exactly what he’d expected.  
   
She had to be dragged out.

Ressler touched the blood pouring from his nose, gingerly feeling the already-rising lump along his cheekbone.

He could hear her screaming in the hall, before the heavy door slammed shut, and he was left to the silence once more.

The record light on the camera was blinking.

It was another three hours - an intensely boring stretch of time interrupted only by a very quick visit from an EMT - before that suit came back. Man from the US Embassy. With a public defender, whatever it was the British called them. Explained the situation.

Vershinin was mildly malnourished, but otherwise in decent health. He wasn’t pressing charges. 

Ressler told him to get the hell out, and kept the lawyer in his seat.

“They can only hold you for another sixteen hours,” the public defender told him. “After that, they have to charge you with something, or cut you loose. But since this is an INTERPOL investigation, things are a bit more complicated.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they’ve got sixteen hours to connect you to a crime in another country. If they can, you’ll likely be extradited there. Depends on how the Crown is feeling about it, to be honest.”

“How they’re feeling about it?”

“I’m sorry I don’t have a more definitive answer for you,” the lawyer said, but shook his head. “I’ve never handled a case like this before.”

“There won’t be a case,” Ressler said. 

The public defender looked relieved.

And that was about the time one of the uniforms showed up and told him they were talking him down to get processed.

+++++

Aram hadn’t imagined given much thought to how the reunion was going to go. If there was going to be a reunion. He’d at least hoped he would have a chance to talk to Don, ask him how he was, catch up...

But the man in that room, the one Keen and Hall had been talking to, that wasn’t at all how he remembered his former colleague. 

It reminded him of the Don they’d seen in those terrible days during the Mako Tanida case.

It scared him.

Aram begged off early that day, needing some air, some space to think. A little heartbroken for Don, for whatever had happened to him. Angry at him, too, for what he’d let himself become. 

He did, however - in between in second and third beer at a faceless pub quite a walk away - get a call from Reddington.

“I must compliment you and your fine work on this job, but I’m afraid we are done.”

“What do you mean?”

“Pull out. Before they catch up to you. That alias was only going to hold for a few days at best.”

“No, wait, Mister Reddington, I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because Don got arrested.”

Reddington didn’t answer.

“Mister Reddington?”

“Pull off, Aram. Before it’s too late. We’re done with this.”

Hence, really, the third beer.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated a tag for this chapter.

"Irvington?  Which one of you is Irvington?"  
   
Ressler covered his yawn with the back of a hand, the unfamiliar constable yelling out across the half-full holding cell, reading off a clipboard.  According to the clock over the sergeant desk there, back on the far end of the corridor, it was almost two AM.  He wasn't in the mood for any more interrogation bullshit.  His face ached from where Keen had slammed it down on the table.  
   
It had been worth it, with that kind of reaction likely getting her at least sent ome, if not officially censured by the embassy.   
   
Still hurt, though.  
   
"Donald Irvington, front and center!  You're being released!"  
   
He raised an eyebrow, dropped his hand.  Swung off the bench he'd been stretched out on for the past few hours.  "About time," he grumbled, heading for the cage door.  
   
There was surprisingly little ceremony, nobody to see him off or offer a few choice threats.  Everyone had probably gone home, late as it was.  "You sure this isn't some kind of mistake?" he asked the constable, walking back up to the front processing area.   
   
"Orders say you're to be cut loose."  
   
"That's not even the full twenty-four you're legally allowed to hold me for," he pointed out, as they came to a stop at worn window.  The attendant behind the counter asked for his name and disappeared again, presumably to go get his stuff.  "What's the play here?"  
   
The constable sighed, and flipped through her clipboard.  "You were being held on kidnapping charges, which have been dropped at the request of Inspector Vershinin, as well as forced entry into a private domicile, which charges have also been dropped, by the homeowners.  You're to stay in London proper for a few more days, however, until the investigation is completed.  We may pull you back for more questioning."  
   
"More?"  He snorted.  "What, you want me as a witness?"  
   
"Sign here please, sir," the attendant said, sliding a piece of paper across the counter to him, a manila envelop laid on top of his heavy jacket.  
   
"You are not to leave town," the constable said.  
   
Not waiting for a second pause, the attendant started listing out his personal effects.  
   
Ressler made sure to snap the burner phone in half.  He handed the constable the screen.  "Make sure Inspector Hall gets that, would you?" he asked and, without waiting for her reaction, stepped out in the cold drizzle of the London night.  
   
No matter.  
   
He turned up his collar and walked out into the night.  
 

+++++

Ressler didn’t bother doing something ridiculous, like finding an Internet cafe. No, he needed a beer and a think, so he headed for the closest pub he could find, ordered at the counter, and went off to find himself a quiet table.

He lifted a smart phone off one of the patrons on the way, some idiot who had it stuffed in his back pocket. He had a twinge of nostalgia doing it. Keen had taught him how to do it one afternoon, after plenty of teasing about her criminal past. He had looked it up, her record, after that op where Reddington took her to steal shit from an embassy. Keen had been arrested for shoplifting, back in high school. Guess the FBI saw it as a usable skill.

Fuck, that had been awful, seeing her like that. Aggravating as hell, and scary - he was not going to spend the rest of his life in some Greek prison for murder, or whatever it as they had been holding him on. She’d been his way out, and he’d taken it.

As he looked up the balance on his account, Ressler was more than a little bothered by how guilty he didn’t feel. Almost vindicated.

She had fallen in love with Reddington. Hadn’t she? It was the only thing that explained what had happened to her.

 _You would know,_ an evil little voice in the back of his mind whispered at him.

He flushed it down with a mouthful of IPA.

Fuck. 

Why did his past have to come visit him now?

And the why the _hell_ hadn’t Luzhin paid him?

''You're out already?"

Ressler almost choked. That voice. What were the odds?  

"Aram?"

But he didn't need to have asked.  It was Aram.  Aram, standing there at the edge of his table, looking like he wanted to throw up.  Ill.  The way he used to get during post-investigation briefs, when Ressler had to talk about stuffed human bodies or guys who let family members die to further their own ambition.

Like he was disgusted, worried, upset by all the new evidence of man's inhumanity to man, but trying very hard not to be.

Just the way Ressler remembered him.

Decent.

Aram had always been decent.

It was a shock, then, seeing him again.

His former colleague fidgeted, hands in his pockets for a moment more, and then practically than himself at the leather-backed stool beside Ressler's own.  "Mind if I sit?" he asked.

"Umm..."

Aram dug a hand into his hair.  "Where the hell have you been?" he demanded.  "You dropped off the face of the Earth.  Even I was starting to think you were dead."

"You guys thought I was dead?”

''And I felt so guilty about it, you know?  Like, I was the last person to see you before you disappeared, and you were so... off that day...''

"What?"

"You fucking left, Don.  You can't tell me everything was okay."

That had to be the first time-the very first-that Ressler had ever heard Aram - quiet, collected, slightly neurotic Aram - swear.  He wasn't quite sure what to do with it.

"Aram..."

"And then we had to pick up the pieces.  Director Cooper had to call your mom, your mom, who told us she hadn't heard from you in years and had no idea you'd been shot or that your fiancee was dead..."

Ressler grimaced. Hadn’t he told his parents about that? He was sure that, at least, had come up in the rare Christmas phone call that year.  “She had to have known...”

"I had to tell her, Don. Me. I had to take her over to your apartment and explain everything to her while she tried to figure out if there was anything she needed before it all went to storage."

"The FBI put my stuff in storage?"

"No, your mom did. Well, she kept a couple things, but..."  
   
And Ressler had to stop himself from laughing.  His parents were good people, the solid, silent, weather-worn type that the rugged plains of Montana produced, but the thought of his mother in his apartment, mournfully going through his things, was ridiculous.  The fact she'd gotten on a plane at all and flown out to a place she considered to be the root of all evil in the country was amazing to him.  She'd never liked him working in DC, and she sure as hell wouldn't have approved of things like the condom stash he had in his bathroom.  
   
"My mom's not the sentimental type."  
   
"Her son disappeared on her!" Aram snapped, clearly exasperated.   
   
Ressler sighed, and checked the time on his watch.  Late.  Goddamn. He needed to go talk to Luzhin. Figure this shit out. He was not going to take a hit on the entire job for not doing a last-minute change in the drop-off point. Unless Luzhin knew he was going to get jumped at the hospital, which was a whole other kettle of fish. “Look, Aram, this little reunion has been touching," he said, rising, grabbing his coat off the back of his seat, "but I'm really not in the mood."  
   
"Why are you here, Don?"  
   
He raised an eyebrow.  Shrugged his coat on.  "Cause I needed a drink.  Why does anybody go to a bar?"  
   
"That's not what I mean."   
   
"Come on..."  
   
"You were in an interrogation room!" Aram exploded, drawing stares for a few of the other patrons.  He flinched, and let his voice drop before speaking again, clearly gathering himself.  But when he did, the words came out in a quiet, angry hiss.  "You were in an interrogation room, laughing off a murder like... like I don't even know!  I've never seen you like that!  And this shit, with Reddington, in Haiti, don't bullshit me, we both remember that op when you went down there with him!"

“I was on leave...”  
   
“Don’t give me that! Those aren’t doctored photos, are they?  That's you.  That why he's been looking for you?  Because of that?"  That simple statement hit Ressler like a sack of bricks, and he just stood there, stunned for a moment, as Aram kept going, apparently oblivious.  "I can't believe it, Don.  You know what he's done, what kind of man he is!  And you'd just let him... let him... touch you... like that?  Since when are you even gay?  What's wrong with you?  What _happened_ to you?!"  
   
 He narrowed his eyes. “Do not make this about me being...”

“I don’t care! You could have told me, it wouldn’t have mattered!” Aram sounded desperate. “Nobody would have cared about the painkillers either!”

“Aram...”

“You didn’t have to run!”

 _Yes I did,_ Ressler almost replied, but held it back. _Yes I did. What other choice was there, if I didn’t want to get eaten by him?_ “I didn’t run.”  
   
Aram glared at him, and then sighed. “Just tell me. Who hired you to find Vershinin?"  
   
"Oh right, like I'm going to risk a potential confession when..."  
   
"I'm not FBI anymore," Aram said quickly.  
   
That stopped him.  "What?"  
   
"I quit, a little while after Keen got sent to Kansas, right before Director Cooper resigned."  
   
"Then what the hell are you doing here?"  
   
"Reddington faked me a passport, brought me over here, to help him look for you.”

“I left a year and a half ago...”

“Yeah, but I had a lead.  Somebody here pulled your file."  
   
"Who?"  
   
"Inspector Vershinin," Aram said, like they were back in the Post Office discussing a case.  "And then he was being held hostage..."  
   
"By Reddington," Ressler finished.  And it was almost like discussing an old Blacklist case; something simple suddenly no longer made a damn bit of sense. 

“Wait, it was Reddington?” Aram’s expression went thoughtful. “Doesn’t that make you wonder what was going on.”

“Apparently he was looking for me.” Ressler sighed, forcefully tamping down the insane little twinge of hope that shot through him. It didn’t mean jack shit. Reddington was upset one of his playthings got away, like a cat with a mouse it hadn’t quite gotten around to killing yet.

"Kind of weird, isn't it? What do you think’s going on?”  
   
He groaned. “This is not a case, Aram.  And you need to get the hell out of the country before they figure out you're not..."  
   
"Come on.  Aren't you curious?  What's going on here?"  
   
He shook his head. Fuck. Of course he was curious - of course he wanted to know what the fuck had been going on for the past month.  But as long as he got paid for it, what the hell difference did it make? What difference did any of it make? 

“Fine, you want to know what happened?”

“Yes.”

“I got hired by a local gangster to find an old friend of his. The inspector watching the gangster pulled my file, Reddington kidnapped the inspector, then the gangster hired me to find the inspector to make sure his rival stayed in jail. It’s not a _case_.”

Aram stared at him. “What?”

Ressler shrugged. “Fucking Russians, what are you going to do?”

“Wait, Ressler, that gangster, who is he?”

“Aram, you’re a good guy, and you shouldn’t be getting mixed up with this shit. Get out of the country, before that State Department dick weasel figures you out,” he said, and sighed. “Or Reddington gets his hooks into you any deeper.”  
   
“Wait...”

But Ressler didn’t.

As much as he did not want to go back to that damn restaurant, he was not _not_ getting paid for this job. 

+++++

The kitchen was already closed for the night, when Ressler got there, one of the wait staff lingering, wiping down tables a final time with that quiet efficiency everyone in the place seemed to share. He nodded to the uniformed man, and asked about Nikolai.

“Kirill is upstairs,” he was told.

And Kirill had more information.

“Fucking police! They take him, don’t say what for, just... just take him, like he is animal!”

That, for five minutes, as Ressler gently took what was left of that handle of vodka away from the distraught gangster, trying to calm him down. In any other setting - his old life - it might have been amusing, seeing somebody as high up on the criminal hierarchy as Kirill making such a thorough disaster of himself. Somebody as powerful as Kirill, pining for a man he technically outranked and certainly wasn’t allowed to want. But he wasn’t an FBI agent anymore; he didn’t have the luxury of laughing away the more terrible incongruities of the underworld.

Kirill’s temper mounted with every reach, every word.

So Ressler stopped talked, and just fucking kissed the murderer instead.

He told himself Luzhin would be back in the morning. That he could get paid, leave, first thing, never have to do this with Kirill again. He told himself that was the only reason why he was doing it in the first place.

_...you know what he's done, what kind of man he is... what happened to you... what happened..._

Ressler lifted Kirill’s chin, and bit down so hard with the next kiss he drew blood from that thin lip.

_We become what we are._

Made him want to douse himself with gasoline and lit a match. 

Kirill, really, was the next best thing.

+++++

Aram knew he needed to get out of Dodge before somebody figured him out. He knew that. Ressler was right about that much. Ressler was definitely right about that.

He could believe that

But Aram had seen Ressler lift that cell phone.

And Aram couldn’t not do it.

A press of a button, on a Samsung Galaxy he’d retrofitted, and he had everything.

If he’d waited until after the conversation started, well...

He had to believe there was something left of his old colleague, in that mess of a man he’d spoken to in the pub tonight.

Aram didn’t even think to question it, really. Not until he had the phone plugged into his equipment, a trace program running on the cell account. Passive triangulation. Ressler hadn’t turned off the guy’s Facebook app. Thank god for Facebook.

It followed a subway route for a while, then the sidewalks.

Then stopped.

At a very, very alarming address.

And then the pieces came together in Aram’s head. Ressler’s client, Ressler’s job...

He scrambled for his phone.

"Aram, I told you..."  
   
"You would have destroyed this phone if you didn't want me contacting you again," Aram snapped, a very bad combination of anger and fear leaving him practically shaking on the small studio’s sofa.  "So please, Mr. Reddington, give me two minutes and hear me out."  
   
"You've got twenty seconds."  
   
"I just saw Don."  
   
"Fifteen seconds..."  
   
"He's going to get arrested! He was hired by an undercover to find that inspector, and...”

“Aram, I take it back, I’m bored already. Goodbye.”  
   
"ResslerwashiredbyNikolaiLuzhin! He's FSB!"  
   
The words came out in an undifferentiated stream, and it was so quiet on the other end of the phone that Aram was afraid Reddington had hung up on him.  
   
But.  
   
"Aram, I need you to repeat that, very slowly.  What did you just say?"  
   
"Ressler was hired by Nikolai Luzhin. He’s at his place right now, umm, the Trans-Siberian, it’s a..."  
   
"Yes, I am aware, well aware, of what the Trans-Siberian is a front for.  But the other part, the part about Luzhin?  Are you sure he’s an undercover?”  
   
"Yeah, of course.  They brought him in for questioning, he was completely..."  And then Aram realized what he'd just said.  Whose identity he'd just handed to one of the worst criminals he'd ever met.  "Oh, shit."  
   
"Aram, this is very, very important."  
   
"No, I can't, shit, I didn't mean..."  
   
"Aram, does he work for Scotland Yard, or does he work for the FSB?"  
   
"I..."  
   
"Tell me."  
   
He hesitated.  But it was to help Don; even if Don didn't deserve it now, they'd been colleagues once, friends, Aram had hoped, and...  
   
“It’s a joint task force. What does that have to do with anything?”  
   
‘Where are you?”

“The apartment, but...”

"Here is what you are going to do. You are going to leave.  Get on the next available taxi to Heathrow, go to the private terminal where we arrived. Ask for Trevin Gage. He’s my pilot. You will wait for me, on the jet, until Dembe and I arrive. You are going to do this right now. You understand me?”  
   
"What is going on?"  
   
"Probably?  Nothing.  But I'm not about to make the mistake of trusting a Russian now."  
   
Aram sat there for a few minutes, trying to think. He hadn’t bothered turning a light on; the computer screen was illumination enough for him. Under normal circumstances. Right then, it felt cold, dead, a lifeless glow that only fed the chill Ressler’s indifference and Reddington’s arrogance had set in his bones. 

Where had he gone wrong? 

Where had all of this gone wrong?

He sighed, and checked the location again, hoping he was wrong. But he wasn’t - he couldn’t be. It all made too much sense.

So he typed Ressler out a text, one last attempt to do who the fuck knew what, and pulled himself off the sofa. 

It was all he could do. More than he should have done. 

Time to go home. To whatever it was he could do for himself there now.

“I’m sorry, Don,” Aram murmured to himself before hitting send on the text, and switching the cloned cell phone off.

Before packing up a bag, setting it by the door, a few choice goodies - the clone among them - tucked inside against the new laptop. 

Before getting the water buckets from the kitchen, to drown the rest of it.

Aram felt oddly relieved.

He really couldn’t wait to get the fuck away from all of this.

+++++

Sleep came hard for Ressler. Difficult to fall into, easy to fall out of, dreams that came and left him more exhausted than when he woke, leaving nothing but a slime of discomfort in the gray light of morning. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept well. Since Audrey, maybe. Before she left him, the first time around.

She’d left in the morning. Before he woke. Just hadn’t been there when he got up for work. Ressler had run, showered, eaten, gotten into the office... actually, it was three days before he’d noticed she wasn’t around. Not that he didn’t realize she wasn’t in his apartment, but that her absence had some kind of significance.

He’d called.

They’d gotten lunch.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Ressler had told her. “It’s just this case, you know, we’ve got a couple of active leads and I’m...”

“You’re off on the hunt,” Audrey had interrupted. “But Don, he’s not some elk, or whatever, and this isn’t the Wild West where, I don’t know, we’re going to die of starvation.”

“Audrey, I know that, but...”

“You don’t have to kill yourself trying to find him. You don’t have to put in these kind of hours. Away from me...” and she’d squeezed his knee under the table. “Aren’t I more fun than all those files?”

“Baby, you’re the most important thing in my life,” he’d promised. “But Reddington, he’s... he’s evil. He needs to be stopped, and I’m so close, we’re so close.”

She hadn’t said anything to that, just bowed her head a little, shining brunette hair - and Ressler remembered that so well, the way she’d looked backlit by the autumn sun from the little cafe’s window - falling in her face. 

The tablecloth dotted with dampness.

She hadn’t said anything.

But Ressler couldn’t stop the tears.

And then she gave him his ring back.

She’d explained it, very briefly, when she came back to him. That night she told him she’d put it on hold with her fiancee, that asshole, Tassels. They went back to his apartment, made love on the couch Ressler had bought specifically for her, the week after he’d met her, so when he finally took her home for the first time, she wouldn’t think he was some loser bachelor with no furniture. She’d liked it, big and perfect for cuddling. The back and arms, just the right heights to get bent over. 

Audrey had had her naughty side, but looking back, with everything he’d done since then, the only way Ressler could remember her was _sweet_.

God, she had been so sweet.

“You’re the most important thing in my life,” she’d whispered to him that night, after they’d finished, when she hooked her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, as she let him carry her back to the bed that had never stopped being _theirs_. “God help me, but you are. I tried, Don, I tried, but...”

“Not going to let you go this time, Audrey,” he’d promised, shushing her, and laid her down on the duvet they’d picked out together. He’d stroked a hand down her body as he knelt down between her still-spread knees, fingers pausing only to trace the underside of her small, pert breasts, kissing his way down. “Anything you need, I’ll do it.”

“You don’t need t- oh!”

He couldn’t remember anymore, the way she tasted.

That was heavy on his mind that morning, as he rolled away from the still-sleeping, dead-eyed Vor prince beside him, and stumbled into his clothes.

When he saw the message, blinking urgently on the stolen cell phone still tucked safely in his jacket pocket.

LUZHIN IS UC FOR SY GET OUT GET OUT NOW - AM

His heart almost stopped.

And then his instincts overrode the swell of panic. 

It was still early, barely six. Ressler took the back stairs, the ones that led directly to a heavy steel door that led into the kitchens and could only be opened from the inside. From there, it was a few easy paces to the back loading dock, the twisted alley beyond, and five blocks from the nearest Underground station. He would chalk this up to a loss, his pro bono work for the year, fade into the crowds, melt away, resurface in a few months doing small jobs again. He’d be fine. He’d...

But there were voices out there.

The sound of footsteps approaching the swinging doors out to the dining area

He only barely scrambled behind the rear row of ovens, under the meant prep area, before the owner of those footsteps passed. Combat boots. Dark pants. Looked like SWAT kit, and Ressler held his breath, trying to remember what official teams looked like here, what their gear was. If he got arrested in a proverbial den of fucking thieves, with Luzhin’s testimony, he was going away for a long time. 

Ressler didn’t want to have to kill cops, but he very much did not want to go to jail.

The footsteps didn’t stop; he hadn’t been spotted. 

He pressed his back to the spotless tile wall, eyes finding a magnetic knife rack on the wall above him.

Waited.

Listened.

The words just barely audible.

“...of no value to you, Luzhin. Not when it comes to you and I.”

“There is no you and I, Raymond. I make this quite clear.”

“Yes, cutting off the export lines out of Kabul... still can’t figure that one out. Opium production is up four hundred percent since the Americans rolled in there. Where’s it all going? What is your organiation doing with it?”

“We sell in Russia...”

“Yes, but everyone’s poor in Russia. Afghan opium once bankrupted the greatest maritime empire on the planet, started not one but two very terrible wars, and you want to tell me that Russia is just absorbing all of that?”

“Our business arrangement is over.”

“How about we grab a drink and go over the numbers? I’m sure I can prove to you that my distribution networks, being worldwide, are far better at managing the kind of volume you’re...”

There was the sound of tires, screeching up the alley. Russian, being exchanged rapidly, loud. Yelling.

Chains.

Ressler closed his eyes for a moment, trying to catch the words.

“So what’s the plan, Luzhin? Kill me, or arrest me?”

“I take you both. See how interrogation goes when your bitch is bleeding out in front of you.” And that was followed by an order, barked out in Russian.

Ressler couldn’t understand it. But he was pretty sure he knew what it was saying.

Reddington was laughing that mocking, joyless laugh from the Post Office days, the one that said he was about to lose.

Digging his gloves out of his pocket, the pocket where they always lived, his buttery-smooth synthetic mechanic’s gloves, Ressler pushed off the floor.

Time to go.

One of the monitors to the right of the kitchen’s main door, security feed from the entrance, showed two men out front, body language on guard. A dark sedan parked just to the side. The driver-side window, down.

There was a figure slumped over the wheel.

Ressler rose slowly up, sole of his shoe twisting easily on the slick linoleum tiles, hand reaching. He pulled one of the smaller kitchen knives off the magnetic rack, testing the heft of it before letting it settle naturally back in his palm, blade’s end almost tapping his forearm. It wasn’t a weapon he was comfortable with, but it was better than nothing.

The laughter was cut short by a pained grunt. The resumed. Then stopped.

The yelling was getting louder.

The footsteps were back.

Between him and his only way out. And there was no help for it.

He flipped the knife again.

He breathed in. And moved very, very slowly, until the only thing that would save him was speed.

The door opened. His free hand clamping down over the man’s mouth, the other plunging the knife straight into the man’s throat. The man went down without a sound, but with blood spurting and body thrashing in death. Ressler dragged the body all the way back to the nearest walk-in before letting it fall.

There was a badge, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. And the fucker had an Uzi on him, tucked up under his long jacket against his ribs in a hip fire position. Definitely not Scotland Yard. A quick rip of a blood-soaked shirt confirmed it, though; no tattoos.

These guys weren’t Vor.

There wasn’t time to wonder.

There was nobody else in the main restaurant, but the security feed still showed those two hostiles - cops, or whatever the fuck they were - out front with that sedan.

He picked up the Uzi, and made for the door. 

No chances.

There was no way of getting out the front without being heard anyway.

Ressler checked the peephole. Took approximate aim. Switched the Uzi to a three-shot burst. Pressed the business end of the gun to the heavy wood.

Depressed the trigger.

Once

Twice. 

Fire screaming down the quiet London street.

Bullets scraped up the side of the building as the second man fell with AK in his hand, the first dying instantly, life billowing up in a puff of red mist. Ressler fired a third burst, tearing away what was left of the second man’s leg, the last bullet catching him in the head as the gun kicked up. The morning air stank of cordite. His own blood was white-hot with adrenalin. 

He could see the body in the car, glass broken by earlier bullets that weren’t his.

It was Dembe.

A hole the size of a tennis ball blown in his skull, just above his right ear.

He let the mag fall out of the gun, into the sewer at his feet, at the car door. The gun he threw across the street, mercifully empty. 

He ran.

No gunfire followed him.

Police sirens broke apart what little was left of the morning calm, an impotent conclusion to a anti-climatic forty-five seconds.

Ressler didn’t let himself think about that.

It wasn’t until he dropped in a seat on the first Underground car that came along, his head in his hands and eyes on the blood spattered across his white sleeve, that he allowed himself to wonder. Had he just killed three cops. If cops would have executed a man in broad daylight like that. If Luzhin was really with Scotland Yard, an informant or a full-blown operative. If all of the past month had been a set-up. 

If Reddington had been arrested, or taken, or was putting on some kind of show for his benefit, to his detriment.

If he gave a shit about any of it.

He changed trains. Changed shirts. Changed trains again. Found an Internet cafe that served food. Tapped a spare bank account and moved his funds out of the compromised one over a crappy panini. 

Bugged out.

And Ressler forgot about the stolen cell phone in his pocket until that evening - down at Brighton’s waterfront, considering his options when it came to stealing a boat and getting the hell out of the UK.

Until it rang.

But it wasn’t Aram on the other end.

“Donny?”

Familiar, American, but... “I’m sorry, who’s this?”

“This is Bruce Gage. You might remember me from Las Vegas. I’d like to hire you for a job.”

“Bruce, umm, it’s, umm, great hearing from you and all...”

“It’s our mutual acquaintance, Donny.”

The hell?

He hung up.

But before he could toss the phone in the water, it rang again.

“Bruce...”

“It’s Aram, Don. It’s me.”

“Aram, what the fuck is...”

“They say they’re going to call the US Embassy and Scotland Yard, turn me in, if you don’t agree to help.”

“Help with what?”

“Dembe’s dead.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Reddington’s missing.”

“It was either the cops or, I don’t know, some kind of mercenary hit squad...”

“It’s FSB. Aram says Luzhin was working with the FSB too. But there’s no record of an arrest being made, so whatever they’re doing...”

He closed his eyes.

Goddammit.

Made sense. Everything made sense.

Of all the fucking things in the world he did not need, he did not need _that_ , the most.

“Don?” Aram again. “Don, I know I kind of, umm, got mad at you last night, but I would really like to avoid jail time here, so if you could...”

“Hand the phone back to Bruce.”

There was a pause, the sound of shuffling. 

“Yeah, Donny? You gonna help or what?”

“I’m in Brighton.”

“We can be there in a few hours.”

“You got his ride?”

“Donny, baby, we are his ride.”

Ressler threw phone away. Watched it fall, and sink, heavy in the leaden-gray waves, cresting high on the incoming tide.

Blood had soaked through the gloves. Even in the fading light, he could see it under his fingernails.

Audrey wouldn’t recognize him anymore.

There shouldn’t have been comfort in that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lalala, I had to change a thing or two after last night's episode (and what was that, like thirty seconds of Donny onscreen? At least we got Ron Perlman. At least there was that).
> 
> Apologies for the delay. I'm not great with "action" scenes, and... well, it's been an odd weekend capping off a crappy two weeks. I've got lousy Internet connectivity for the next few weeks, but hopefully won't be as far in between updates.


	9. Chapter 9

“Let’s go over this again.”

“There’s nothing here, Don. I’m telling you, he’s vanished.”

“What, into a black hole?” Ressler licked his lower lip, eyes on the wall of glass in front of them. The sum knowledge he had of Reddington’s disappearance. There wasn’t much there. But it had only been a week, and as Aram had complained, the place’s communication infrastructure hadn’t been upgraded in a few years. “There’s always something, Aram. Has to be. Nobody just ceases to exist. So what do we know?”

“I don’t know what else you want me to be doing, Don. I’m wiped.”

Ressler felt bad about it, but then, he hadn’t made the call about keeping the computer expert captive. Locked up, in a lower set of rooms without so much as a window. No, the twins had decided that. Dembe’s body turning up first in a London morgue, then on the nightly BBC news, had evidently been quite the shock. 

Aram was running a couple dozen different trace programs, scanning Internet traffic, looking for at least one of a long, long list of possible indicators. 

But even with the parameters Ressler could establish with some confidence - facility invisible to American and NATO intelligence sources, geographically located inside the Russian Federation, off the grid - there was a terrifying amount of open-source data to comb through.

It was a waiting game at this point.

“I realize that, Aram. But we gotta work faster here.”

“We don’t know anything,” Aram told him, and turned up his music.

It was clear a dismissal as any.

Ressler tried not to take it personally.

Trevin was waiting outside the suite’s doors with the key.

Bastard made sure he gave Ressler a kiss - full on tongue-in-mouth - before slammed the heavy metal slab shut again.

“You don’t have to be an asshole about this,” Ressler snapped, twisting away from the pilot’s grasp.

It just got him another smile. “Bruce is still in bed, baby. You wanna join us?”

They’d ensconced themselves in one of Reddington’s safe houses, a once-grand estate, crumbling back into its hillside east of Istanbul. Close to Russia, but not inside it, clear lines of sight to the west, north and southwest. The lights of the city, brilliant at night, and the smell very far away. The sky was gray though, the haze of pollution low and thick between the far hills.

Nothing like the Istanbul Ressler remembered from James Bond movies.

Just as depressing as the first time he’d been there.

The twins had chosen this place, they claimed, for its proximity to an international airport with highly corrupt officials; Ressler suspected they just liked it. They’d spent the last week sunning themselves out by the very modern pool on the ancient terrace, playing old Super Nintendo games on the Wii hooked up to the only TV in the place, ribbing each other in twinspeak as they came in from a shared morning run on the expansive grounds. Making out in the kitchen. Wearing an absolute minimum amount of clothes at all times.

It was a safe house, sure, but it was also a hang-out.

They were a good five years older than him, and they’d been acting like a pair of uncaged puppies for the entirety of their time here.

Ressler couldn’t have cared less. 

It kept them quiet, and it kept them away from Aram, which suited him just fine. If he left to wander into town, meet with the scant few contacts he’d been able to rustle up, or just wander. Pretend like he was just a normal guy, on a normal trip. Like all the ghosts following him around were only that; whispers of guilt over normal, mundane things.

_You never wanted to be normal._

He felt like he was losing his mind.

It scared him, how worried he was about Reddington.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Why not?”

Waking Bruce up was always kind of fun.

And the way Trevin kissed him, like he was drowning and Ressler was air, was damn near pornographic in its intensity.

+++++

Reddington going dark was nothing new; even his casual clients knew he had the habit of doing that, from time to time, and sustaining his vast network of operations during such absences was par for the course, for his people. Reddington vanishing, however, Dembe turning up dead...

Well, Ressler had brought down enough criminals in his day in to know what happened when the head of an organization was taken out. 

In Reddington’s case, the impact would be global. Even the twins, his private pilots for the past ten years, had no idea how many cookie jars their boss had his fingers in. How many deals and shaky alliances held based on his penchant for casual violence and graphic threats. How many enterprises were stabilized by his mere presence. 

“Reddington’s pulled shit like this on us before, just took off,” Bruce had explained to Ressler, on their way out of England and into international air space.

Trevin had nodded. “...not like we’re his keepers or anything...”

“...but he wouldn’t sacrifice Dembe for some play.”

“Us maybe.”

“Not Dembe.”

“And we’re not the only people who are going to be looking at this in a certain way.”

“Big problems.”

“Like, fucking huge problems.”

The Gage twins’ logic. Of course.

Didn’t mean he couldn’t use it when he needed to.

“We don’t find him, there’s no telling what unravels,” Ressler had told Aram, after he left the cockpit and took the handcuffs off his old friend. “They’re just a little skittish about all that right now.”

“You tried to kill him.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Ressler, I like you. And if those guys in the cockpit are going to, I don’t know, turn me in or kill me or whatever, I can live with it. But stop trying to play me. You don’t need to play me.” He’d sighed. “Just tell me why you’re doing this.”

“They’re paying me.”

+++++

Ressler couldn’t remember the first time he’d become aware of Raymond Reddington’s existence. At Quantico, the guy was talked about with the same mixture of disbelief and awe that Deep Throat might have once been. He was a legend, a fascinating case, something that any instructor could write into any lesson plan with a little effort and the right angle. 

He was too unreal to be real. Too over the top to be a fabrication.

Ressler did remember the first day he found out about an active investigation, though. It hadn’t exactly been a volunteer task force, but they needed guys who were young and had completed at least one special tactics course, who were good with a gun and didn’t have a record of whining to a shrink after they shot someone. Sure, the Bureau encouraged those sorts of conversations - employing psychopaths in law enforcement generally wasn’t a good idea - but it preferred when agents put up a bit of a fight about having to have them.

Stupid, but Ressler had already shot somebody in the line of duty the year before. Stupid shit, high-up meth dealer who was looking at life without parole.

Hadn’t bothered him nearly as much as everyone told him it should have.

“Just means you’ve got a strong stomach,” Bobby had said, easy, over a couple of beers in some Irish pub with dark walnut paneling and microbrews on tap. It had been an interview, but a casual one; the team would later tell him that he was their top pick, out of the sixty or so agents who had volunteered. “You don’t ever have to be ashamed of not being ashamed of doing what needs to be done.”

“What needs to be done with Reddington?”

“He’s a traitor. You remember what we do with traitors, right?”

“I don’t want to sign up for some hit squad, Agent Johnson...”

“It’s gonna make your career, when we catch this bastard. You an ambitious man, Don?”

“Yes sir, absolutely.”

“Good. Cause this assignment? You’ll be able to write your own ticket. Anywhere you want to go.”

Back then, _anywhere you want to go_ had been a brownstone in Arlington, a beautiful wife who didn’t have a name yet there when he got home, kids in private school, with access to all the things he’d never had. Then Audrey came along, a somewhat out-of-place friend of a friend at a colleague’s house warming party, and it all seemed to be falling into place.

He never saw her as a means to an end; no. 

She was the end.

She was the reason.

Reddington was the means.

Laying there in the still bedroom, the morning warming to afternoon in the yellowed sky outside, Bruce’s lips on his and Trevin’s body stretched around his cock, well...

What he’d said to Aram, on the plane. That was the Gages’ reasoning.

Ressler didn’t really believe it.

Because Ressler had seen enough of this fucking underworld he’s fallen into to know that nobody was irreplaceable. Especially not somebody who wasn’t driven by any typical motive. Money, power, sex, revenge, ideology, insanity. He’d looked at all of them, every single possibility nearly a century of FBI criminal profiling could offer, for what Reddington was doing, or why. Every man needed a purpose, had a reason. But Reddington’s...

The closest Ressler had ever come, to determining what made Reddington tick, was what the man had told him in the Box, Anslo Garrick prowling outside.

_We become who we are._

The international criminal underworld would survive Reddington’s loss.

But Ressler had been forced, this past week, to face the fact that he, himself, might not.

Reddington, chasing him, then running from him.

Well. 

He wasn’t a means anymore.

And Ressler needed to find him. If for no other reason than to rid himself of this.

That’s all it was. That was all it fucking was.

He punched up with his hips into Trevin, thrusting hard.

Trevin groaned in pleasure.

Which really only kind of pissed him off even more.

+++++

“I think I’ve found it,” Aram said, on the morning of the tenth day, when Ressler stopped by with breakfast. “But you need to tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Why I should give this to you.”

“I hate the guy as much as you do. But he’s saved my life, more than once. I can’t just let the Russians torture him to death.”

“You don’t owe him anything, Don.”

“I know.”

Aram sighed, and gave him a print-out. GPS coordinates.

“What is this?”

“Small town, on the edge of Lake Baikal, on the Russian side. Every forty-eight hours, somebody’s going into the Internet cafe there, activating a VPN connection for exactly five minutes, and then disconnecting.”

“A VPN. So you can’t see what they’re transmitting?”

“I managed to grab some of what they’re running. Put a tap on the machine, and... anyway. The programming language is typical, I guess, for this sort of thing, but the notes are in Russian.”

“But it’s a Russian town.”

“It’s in Russia. Most of the people there don’t speak Russian, though. And none of them have the ability to program something like this.”

“Aram...”

“It’s worth a look, don’t you think?”

Ressler bit his lip, considering. It was a long fucking way to go; he’d have to come up through Mongolia; there was a high probability he’d be arrested if he used public transport. A risk, a real serious risk. “You know they’re going to make you stay here.”

“Yeah, I figured.” 

Ressler just looked at him, sallow-faced, exhausted, in the illumination from the screens. And Aram crumpled.

“You know what I learned about myself on the task force, Don? That I’m a coward. I’m not ashamed of that. I’m just... I’m not cut out for this, any of this, I couldn’t keep doing it to myself.”

“You’re not a coward.”

“Yeah I am.” And Aram ran a hand through his unkempt hair. “But when I realized I was compromising myself, I got the hell out. I had the courage to do that much.”

“We become what we are,” Ressler muttered, staring at the paper.

Bruce and Trevin were more than happy to get the jet out for him.

He was in Ulan Bator by the next morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo-hoo, it's coming together!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully, this works. It was giving me a lot of trouble, and I was trying not to just write the same "and then he was tortured, lol" story as the last installment.

Ressler’s plan was one of those things that was simple in theory, complex in execution. Fly into Ulan Bator, cross the border, base himself out of Turka, roughly central on the lake’s southern coast and the location of that damning VPN connection, rent a boat, find Reddington.

Simple.

Extremely difficult.

There was nothing scenic or poetic about the trip; Ulan Bator was filthy, the roads pitted and unpaved, the taiga scarred by careless inhabitation. The days were cold and the nights colder, and despite the stunning sweeps of the mountain vistas, there was little color in the earth. The curtains on the small Russian bus to Babushka, and the bright purple cushions in the second-class train car to Turka, were the brightest thing on his week-long trek north.

Nothing much remarkable about it at all.

Tourism wasn’t unheard of in that part of the world, but a blue-eyed Westerner coming into town alone was odd. In the interest of presenting a decent cover, Ressler had made a few passes at the better stores in Istanbul, before departure. Gotten himself kitted out with a professional-grade photography set-up. Made him think about that Hasselblad Reddington had given him, once upon a time, and he wondered what had happened to it. 

Mom wouldn’t have taken it. She wouldn’t have known the value.

It was more upsetting a thought than it should have been.

Turka was nothing much to talk about, just a small huddle of blue-roofed buildings by the lakeshore, aligned with faceless Soviet precision. Russian would have been useless here, even if he’d spoken it; their dialect was rough, strange. Still, a few people spoke a little English, and the woman at the village’s tiny grocery store spoke a smattering of French, and that was good enough for him to get himself set up.

The language barrier wasn’t a problem.

In a way, it was a relief.

Aram hadn’t been able to give him much about the suspicious Internet traffic. In a town as small as that one, though, it was more than enough to go on. One of the two bars in town offered a few Internet terminals, the satellite dish on their roof the owner’s pride and joy. That man luckily had no problem with renting Ressler a room in the adjoining five-bedroom motel. The shower was at the end of the hall and the bed was little more than a futon, but the breakfast was surprisingly good and the owner was thrilled to have somebody with which to practice his English.

It also gave Ressler an excuse to hang out and watch the Internet terminal down in the common area.

But waiting for the guy - whoever he was - to show up was boring, unproductive, and Ressler asked his new best friend a few more questions about things he could do. Turned out there was an older couple in town who would love to rent him their boat - for what he was sure, to them, was an exorbitant price. He haggled a little, more for appearance’s sake, and threw in a bottle of vodka he’d brought with him from Istanbul as sweetener.

They needed it back in a few days, they warned, talking through the bar-owner.

“With luck, I will find what I need by then,” he replied.

Lake Baikal was huge. The scale hadn’t seemed so intimidating on the maps and in the literature, but once Ressler set out across its black depths, the scale became clear. It was the largest body of fresh water on the planet; he could see why they’d brought Reddington here.

Waves like the ocean, they told him in town.

With luck, he wouldn’t have to stray that far.

The rented boat was a small thing, a fifteen foot fishing craft of some style he didn’t know the name for. The engine was temperamental, it rattled something fierce, but it was good enough for an afternoon’s trip up the coast. The scenery was no less stark.

Here and there, Ressler saw rocky islands. Birds covered the cliff faces, seals sunned themselves on the rocky little shores. None seemed a good candidate for a prison, although that had to be the answer. There was nothing in the rolling taiga around Turka that could have concealed a prison, and town gossip would have carried the news of a prisoner to every door.

No, Reddington had to be on an island.

Ressler just had to figure out which one.

He had to wait.

Wait, in a sleepy little village, a thousand miles from civilization.

It was quiet in Turka. Loud in his head.

And he asked himself, that first day he was out on the lake, as he turned the boat back to port, what in the hell was he doing? What was he trying to find, to prove? Reddington...

Nothing had been right since Reddington came into his life.

After this, they’d be even.

The bed in his rented room was so uncomfortable, Ressler had to resort to jerking off to get himself to sleep. He fell into dreams, nerves still echoing the movement of the water, that he mercifully couldn’t remember upon waking. 

It had been a long time since he’d let himself think about Reddington when he touched himself. But that night, for some reason, he couldn’t get the criminal out of his head.

A few days later, though, his target finally walked in to use Turka’s only functional Internet terminal.

Child’s play, really, to tag the greasy motherfucker’s boat, track it back via GPS through a number of stops to the final one. He didn’t have access to satellite imagery; to get eyes on, Ressler had to go out.

He waited until nightfall.

It took until almost dawn to get there.

Ressler cut his lights far out of sight range of the island, continued on in that chill darkness that always clung to the underside of night. He kept the engines low, letting the noise fade into the small waves beating against the craggy sides of the distant island.

Obtaining a set of night vision goggles - much less smuggling them past Customs, even in Mongolia - had been impossible. Fortunately, though, hiding a night vision camera in the rest of his photography gear hadn’t been complicated at all.

He watched the world through the lens, taking as many photos as he could in what time he had, making a slow circuit around the island. The green-hued images weren’t promising - steep rock walls, one point of entry up a narrow, guarded stairway, a rain-worn concrete facade jutting from an upper cliff face, but it could be done. 

Nothing was unassailable.

But getting off alive, with a severely weakened older man, was going to be much harder.

 _You’re going to have to kill everyone,_ Ressler told himself, as the winds picked up, hailing the return of the sun. He refueled the outboard engine on the small boat and headed back to port, disturbed by how easy a thing that was to contemplate.

How it didn’t bother him at all.

It took six more nights, before Ressler felt as if he had enough information to move forward with a rescue - guard rotation, weapon types, any entrenchments. The island was clearly not a place that had been meant to be found, so its outward defenses were surprisingly non-existent.

It was probably going to get him killed anyway.

It was almost a relief.

He cleaned and loaded the weapons he’d brought with him, left a pile of Russian rubles under the pillow in the room he’d rented, to pay for the boat, told the bar owner he was going out to do a night shoot again, and called the Gages, on his way out of the tiny harbor.

“ETA, eighteen hours. You boys gonna be able to support that?”

“Yeah, we got you. Let us know if the GPS coordinates change.”

“Go get the boss back, Donny. See you in a few.”

+++++

There was nothing to comment on, as far as Reddington was concerned, when it came to his new round of captivity.

One prison was much like another.

A new interrogation indistinguishable from the old.

At least, until they ripped the nerves out of his hand.

As a rule, in situations like the one he’d found himself in after confronting Luzhin, Reddington did not allow himself the luxury of hope. Hope got men killed. It wasn’t about believing in some amorphous possibility of rescue, but figuring out how to acquire it for oneself. Controlling his own destiny. That was what Reddington believed in.

But here, there were no angles to play. Nobody to manipulate. There were a mere six people on this island, and none of them spoke English. Or Russian. Or anything else useful. Reddington hadn’t been able to identify the dialect, but the interrogator had informed him on his first day here that it was Ossentian. A language they knew he didn’t speak a word of.

“You’ll talk to me,” said the speaker set into the wall, protected by a rebar cover, in the interrogation room, when they finally took him there. “You talk into this.”

His cell was at one end of a crumbling hallway that felt as if it had been built in the Soviet era, the interrogation room at the other. They’d left him in the cell at first, Reddington waking from a painful drugging; how long, he wasn’t sure. Four beatings, tame shit, even by Russian standards.

Then they’d let him out. 

His cell was at one end of a crumbling hallway that felt as if it had been built in the Soviet era, the interrogation room at the other. That was the location of the only light; the entire facility stank of rot, and there were no windows. There was no visible way out of the corridor. 

It was a tomb. Like the ones built for the Egyptian pharaohs. 

It was almost funny. Russia, going to such lengths to keep him buried.

“And what shall I say, if there’s nobody around to ask me questions?”

“This will ask you questions.”

“Not much room for banter, is there?”

“We will ask you questions, and the guards will expect your answers. If you do not answer, you will be beaten.”

“So how does this work? Is this a recording? Are we live, streaming over the Internet? Or could there be somebody in another room, listening to...”

“If we do not like the answers you give us, you will be beaten. Is that understood? Nod at the guard if you understand.”

A recording, then. 

Didn’t necessarily mean anything. It could have been a recording made by somebody in the next room.

He could be on the fucking moon, too.

Reddington didn’t put much past the Russians.

There was nothing to do but laugh.

One of the guards had come in with a cattle prod.

He’d felt one of his ribs snap before he passed out.

He’d come to again in his cell. Naked.

From there, sense had begun to bleed. Reddington knew all the tricks, had been through some of the hardest training the US military offered on survival and resistance, much of it taught by men who had been through it themselves in Vietnam, or studied it closely. Soviet interrogation tactics had once been legendary. The FSB has largely reverted to more brutal, less sophisticated methods - beatings, what have you - since the wall came down, but the place he found himself in now... 

Nothing was square, nothing straight. The planes of the walls and floor and ceiling had all been redone to slant. They didn’t feed him with any regularity; he could hear dripping sometimes, or a baby crying, or screaming; they’d leave the food tray flap open on his door with a red light pointed straight into his cell; they’d drug his food and dress him in different things before hauling him into the interrogation room.

Standard stuff.

But it was standard for a reason.

And the interrogation session where Reddington woke up in what was unmistakably midshipman blacks, stomach gnawing with hunger, he broke down.

They weren’t asking anything horrible, after all. Just a few questions about drug smuggling in South America.

He didn’t much like the cartels anyway.

He came to his senses again in his cell, and shredded that fucking facsimile of a uniform off, enraged at himself.

Earned him another beating. 

Felt like penance, in a way. 

But Reddington knew enough about himself to know he was slipping. And they must have known it too, because every interrogation session after that involved chains, and a table, and medical instruments.

And then there was the session where they brought in the tweezers and the electrodes and the speaker asked him about the Fulcrum.

It was a tomb, the FSB had built him. Like the pharaohs of old. But it wasn’t his body they were going to cut apart and preserve for all time. No. 

His mind. That’s what they wanted to dissect. 

He couldn’t do anything but laugh.

Laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

+++++

Ressler paused long enough to wipe his k-bar off, reminded uncomfortably of all those times he’d field-dressed deer with his dad, back in high school. He had blood on his hand, working its way under to the hilt, and he wiped that off too. There was a keychain, hanging from the dead man’s belt, and he took that too.

Just made his fingers sticky again.

He hated close-quarters shit like this.

Three guards down. There were at least two more, as far as he could surmise from the surveillance footage, but he couldn’t find them.

It was almost dawn.

Moving fast, Ressler slipped under the security camera at the top of the stairs, through the gate, still swinging open, and onto a rain-slick walkway that wound up between two rock faces to a heavy metal door.

It was opening.

Ressler didn’t break stride. Sheathed the knife and pulled his gun out in the same move.

With the suppressor firmly on, the two shots he fired off were quieter than the waves below.

He yanked the body out of the open doorway, drug it to the edge, and rolled it into the ocean.

In the cold stone walls that stretched out before him, Ressler could hear laughter.

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself, and headed in what he hoped what was the direction of the sound.

With the echoes, it was hard to tell.

There were no more cameras. Ressler wasn’t surprised by that, not really. The place had a a thin, cracking veneer of cheap Soviet concrete, plaster, and electrical piping, but it was older than that. Much older. How or why the place had been chipped into the island, the former FBI man really didn’t give a shit. It was a thieves’ den, built before radio technology, and that was likely what the FSB had been going for.

Not an American black site, like the tanker ships or the quasi-legendary Factory.

The island was a black hole. Reddington had been dropped into it with the very real expectation that he would never emerge. They’d had to keep the place dark. No signals in, no signals out, a bare minimum of electricity, absolutely nothing that would lead it to be flagged by a spa satellite.

Odds were pretty good nobody would find the bodies there for a long, long time.

The corridor opened into several other rooms - one a bathroom, another living quarters, a staging area, a kitchen - but ended abruptly, a narrow spiral stair leading down to a small lading where light was spilling out from under a stone door.

Light, and that laugh.

Ressler remembered one of those Quentin Tarantino movies, watched with his then-girlfriend back in high school. Mexican standoff.

He closed his eyes. Breathed in the stale, moldy air of the bunker.

And walked as carefully as he could down that rickey stair.

 _Don’t hesitate,_ he heard his dad saying, back in the cold Montana autumn. _Even a white-tail is dangerous if you corner it, and once it smells you, it’s gone and your mom gets pissed about her empty freezer. So don’t hesitate._

The door wasn’t latched from the outside.

Gave way at the slightest touch.

Ressler only got a glimpse of what was going on. A single moment, frozen, hanging. 

There was a disembodied voice, talking very calmly about something, _Fulcrum_

There was a man by a car battery, and a man at the side of a table, both wearing heavy rubber gloves.

And there was Reddington. Chained - not strapped, but _chained_ \- to a blood-smeared stainless steel table. The room stank of raw sweat and ozone.

The two men stared.

The door hit the wall, swinging open on a set of concealed hinges, contacting hard.

Ressler got off exactly two shots, the second catching the man at the table in the side of the head, before the one at the electricity controls bum-rushed it.

It was a short fight, mean and nasty, one that Ressler only barely won. The man grabbed the battery, swinging hard. Ressler took a blow from it, hard across the chest, doubling him over and sending his gun flying. He scrambled back across the floor, kicking out with one booted foot as hard as he could, hand digging down for the knife. He only barely got it out in time, swinging up and out and deep into his assailant’s foot before the assailant could drop the car battery on him. The man went down hard, and Ressler rolled on top of him, ripping the knife out as he went. He got his knees under the man’s armpits before the asshole could recover, dropping his weight hard in just the right place.

The blade all but bloomed out of the man’s throat.

Reddington was still laughing.

The guy he’d shot was still moving

Ressler got up, a massive flood of adrenaline helping manage the crushing pain thudding in his stomach, where he as hit. With a massive effort, he hobbled over to where the gun had scattered, picked it up, and emptied four rounds into the torturer.

He let himself breathe for a few seconds.

The speaker on the wall still wanted to know about the Fulcrum.

Ressler shot that too.

The laughter had stopped.

Re-holstering his gun, Ressler kicked the body at his feet out of the way and strode over to Reddington. 

The criminal was a mess. He’d lost a lot of weight, his unwashed body a mass of bruises and cuts, some of which had begun to turn yellow with infection. His nails had all been pulled out, his hair shorn off. There was blood caked below his ears. And his left arm was bad, very bad. There were at least two dozen acupuncture needles that had been wired up with thin lines of copper; on the underside, a chain of five sets of small tweezers had been driven in deep. There was surprisingly little blood there, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

The chains had been padlocked. Combo locks.

Mercifully, there was a master key slot on the back of all of them, corresponding to a key on the ring he’d stolen.

“Can you walk?” he asked, more brusque than he perhaps should have been, as he worked the restraints off Reddington’s badly battered skin. “Am I going to be able to get you out of here?”

Reddington didn’t say anything.

He’d passed out.

“What I wouldn’t give for some of your bullshit snark right now,” Ressler muttered to himself, and started shucking the clothes off one of the dead men.

Getting Reddington down to the boat was easier than it should have been. Day was breaking, as Ressler got him above ground again, and the master criminal roused enough to help grip the railing on the slippery, narrow stair down to the small slip. The interrogators had a better boat, but all Ressler took from it was the gasoline. He transferred that over, just in case, and laid down a couple of lifejackets for Reddington to lay down on, covering him over with a space blanket from his pack, and a trp to keep him dry.

“You’re going to hold on for me, Red,” was all he told him.

There were seals watching them, as he guided them out into the morning waters.

Ressler followed the coordinates sent to him by the Gages, not sure what to expect. The route took him east, to the south shore, miles from any official inhabitation. He had to beach the craft on another of those narrow beaches, but once the motor was off, he could hear the whir of props.

Not the jet then, and he could have laughed at himself for such a stupid thought.

Reddington had been doing enough of that for them both, though. The whole, cold, six hour trip. Laughing, giggling, hiccuping.

He’d been in that pit for almost a month. His mind could have slipped. They could have broken him.

Ressler still hauled him up like a sack of potatoes, Reddington struggling out of instinct more than awareness.

“Knock it off,” Ressler told him, tired and hurting himself, brain finally starting to catch up with what he’d just done, who he’d done it for. “Calm the fuck down and let me get you out of here.”

Reddington, for whatever reason, actually complied.

Ressler took him a hundred yards up the shore line, through a tight copse of trees and over a small ridge.

He wasn’t sure what kind of transport the twins would have been able to arrange, but his jaw almost dropped at the sight that greeted them.

A US Air Force C-130 Medevac airframe.

A goddamn military plane.

A pair of crewmen running towards him in ACUs.

He had his gun out before he knew what he was doing, one arm holding Reddington up. “Identify yourselves!” he yelled over the sound of the engines.

“Master Sergeant Martin Lopez and Captain Thomas Wright, US SOCOM!” came the reply from one of the big, no-nonsense men. “You Donald Irvington?!”

“How the fuck do I know who you are?”

“Special mission, came from an Agent Zuma at the Company. We were told you and an asset required extract!”

Ressler didn’t let his guard down, but his surprise must have registered as the two men approached. The one who hadn’t spoken, the captain, made a gesture for Reddington. Ressler wasn’t sure if he could trust them, but just then, he lost his grip and Reddington collapsed to the thin tundra grass. He sank down nect to him, as the captain snapped on a pair of latex gloves.

“This man looks like he’s been through hell.”

“Pulled him out of a Russian torture cell.”

“He needs immediate medical attention,” the captain said, and poked his arm. “And you’re going to have to tell me everything about his condition.”

“No offense Captain, but it’s been a long few months, and...”

The sergeant handed him a radio.

_We told you we’d pull through, didn’t we?_

_Get your hot ass on board, Agent Irvington._

He sighed.

Even if it was a trap, Ressler was just too worn-down to care.

“Let’s get him on board,” Ressler replied quietly, and looked up, to see a team running towards them with a litter.


	11. Chapter 11

The one thing the painkillers couldn’t take care of was the ache. In his toes, the fingers of his right hand. At the tips, which was the whole point of fingers to begin with.

Reddington didn’t bother asking his doctor for anything more than what she was already giving him.

He needed the clarity pain brought.

Barely able to recall the moment of rescue, Reddington had come around somewhere over the Aegean. In his own jet, his own doctor attending to him, a mess of tubes and wires and those wretched beeping machines cluttering the place up.

“We almost lost you,” she said, in her sweet Portuguese accent. “But I think you’re going to pull through.”

There had been somebody else in the jet with them, somebody in the back, dark, barely more than a blob in his drug-blurred sight. He hadn’t gotten a good look at who it was, but from what the Gages told him, after landing, it had to be Donald.

But Donald hadn’t stayed.

He hadn’t been at the safehouse, an old chateau set deep into the decadent green foothills of the Alp. Settled in, like an ornament on a Christmas tree. Reddington had always adored the place, purchased it through a shell company decades ago, one of his first and only real estate investments. It was everything a man couldn’t have in America, everything a naval officer wouldn’t like, and something about that was comforting. Quiet, close enough to a well-touristed skiing area for him to not be a total anomaly, but private enough for him to hide away in comfort.

Romantic, in a way, especially once the snows came, which they would likely do very soon now.

Donald hadn’t stayed.

The Gages could only tell Reddington so much about where he’d been, what he’d been through, what the hell was going on. Pulled from the Russian taiga via commandeered military Medevac. Emergency stop in Tajikistan, to retrieve the jet, the doctor and the former FBI computer analyst who’d forged the orders for the C-130 crew. Non-stop to Engadin. Five hour drive to the chateau. 

But that was it.

They’d left him to piece everything else together himself.

And Reddington had no love for the picture that was forming.

It wasn’t just Donald being gone.

His left arm was a lost cause. The specialist he’d had brought in had confirmed it the day before. Explained the entire situation. “I’m afraid you’ll never use your hand again. The nerve damage is simply too much,” the nice Swiss physio had told him, after a few long hours of testing. “May I ask how it happened? I have never seen anything like this.”

“Your fee’s downstairs with my man. Please don’t forget to collect it on your way out.”

Everything else, besides the arm, was healing nicely. The bruises fading, the worst of the cuts closing to the point where they didn’t sting anymore when the nurse bathed him. His body was learning how to sleep on a soft surface again; his stomach let him keep solid food down.

Torture.

Reddington had never given much thought to retiring - dying was a certainty, made more immediate by inertia. There was no getting off, no stepping away.

Once, he and his wife had talked about buying a second home in the Caribbean, downsizing once their daughter was in college.

Now, they both hated him, his wife married to another man and his little girl far beyond his reach. It had been in the service of saving their lives, of preserving something of his life, the last wholly unselfish act he had ever committed, but yet...

Reddington knew what he was.

What he didn’t understand was why he _still_ was.

“Have you had any luck locating him?” he asked Bruce at one point, when the boys stopped by to report in on the latest supply run. He had them working a bit outside their wheelhouse, but Dembe’s absence wasn’t just a hole in his heart; his adopted son had been an integral part of his operations. The Gages were loyal, at least, and knew how to avoid attracting attention when they needed to.

“Donny made it really clear to us, before he left, he was done with helping yo...”

“He doesn’t pay your salary, does he?”

“He’s a mess, boss. Leave him alone until he gets his gimbels straight.”

Reddington glared at his pilot. “I think you misunderstand me, Bruce dear. This is not a request, this in an order.”

Bruce flashed him an apologetic smile, and shook his head. 

Healing was progressing, but it was slow. Slower than it used to be, and Reddington hated the reminder of his age. He’d be sixty, sooner than he liked to admit. How long were they going to keep chasing him? Why wouldn’t they just leave that Fulcrum nonsense alone? His whole life, lost to it.

His whole life, snatched back for reasons even he couldn’t fathom.

It wasn’t that his days were empty. Far from it. He hadn’t been gone long enough for people to start questioning his absence; almost everything was still functioning properly, bolstered adequately with a few phone calls and well-placed threats. The things that weren’t would require his personal attention, and well, that wasn’t possible until after the situation with his arm was resolved. 

It was time consuming, tugging all those disparate threads back into their proper place in the weft and weave of his little empire, but hardly difficult. And then there was the physical therapy, focused on helping recover muscle mass lost during his little vacation, the painfully slow meals, chatting with the chateau’s caretaker, a South African woman he’d saved from a rape gang back in the late Nineties, trying to train up the twins as an emergency stopgap against Dembe’s loss...

Difficult things, stressful things, but nothing that detracted from the primary objective of healing. His doctor wouldn’t have allowed it otherwise.

No matter how much he could dream up for himself, Reddington still found himself with too much time to think. Too many hours, all bleeding from day to night to day again, consumed by silence.

That was bad.

That’s when the pain started getting to him.

Reddington had had a nail pulled out during SERE training, back when he was an ensign and not nearly as disillusioned as he’d imagined himself to be. It had hurt like a bitch. Having all twenty gone was nearly unbearable.

He couldn’t decide if the worst part was the skin exposed to air, caking and cracking and oozing that nasty clear liquid, or the glacier-slow slide of fresh keratin across it.

Dying in Russia...

Dying in Russia would have been liberating.

It was a thought Reddington couldn’t escape over the slow weeks of his recovery, and that bothered him. He’d never much been given over to the idea of suicide; he’d spent his adult life running from even the slightest indication of his own mortality. He lived, and lived passionately, and never worried about whether there was meaning in all of it, a reason for it beyond that instinctual desire to _survive_.

Made him feel... unmade.

Donald Ressler was always going to be the end of him.

His fingernails on his right hand were growing back in, red and angry, and the codeine wasn’t touching it. The ones on his left, on the other hand...

The chateau didn’t feel much different from the FSB’s hell hole, now did it?

He slung his arm up against his chest, and pulled his jacket on over it. A bit awkward, but nothing he wouldn’t learn to live with. The air was crisp outside, the coming autumn bright in it, and Reddington took a deep breath.

He’d survived. He lived on.

Five miles to the sleepy little ski village on the other side of the valley.

No problem.

Felt good, to stretch his legs, breath the bracing mountain air.

His body was still weak, still recovering from the long period of slow starvation he’d been subjected to, and he was contemplating calling one of the twins to come pick him up as he finally limped in to one of the small pubs in the center of town. 

But before he could ask the very nice hostess for the phone, he spotted a very familiar set of shoulders. Turned away from him, framed in sunlight from the windows.

“I was actually just looking for my friend,” he told the hostess. “And look, there he is. How convenient.”

+++++

“What are you doing, Red?” was the first thing Donald said. “Did you walk here?”

The first thing Donald said, finally looking up from his computer, ten minutes after Reddington had sat down and ordered himself a lager.

“Really? That’s the first thing you’re going to say? Come, Donald, let’s not be so pedestrian about things.”

“Ha,” Donald replied, the single word dripping with sarcasm, and closed his computer screen. “I just didn’t think your manicurist was going to let you out so soon.”

“She’s my doctor right now,” Red replied smoothly. 

“Right.”

“I’m a bit surprised, to see you here,” - because hell to all this beating around the bush, “especially since the Gages assured me you left the area.”

Donald shifted, rolling his shoulder a little. “Yeah, well, it’s nice enough, and I don’t have any jobs pending at the moment.”

“Really?”

“I’m a bit hot right now, remember?” 

“Switzerland does have reasonable extradition laws.” Donald didn’t answer, eyes on the world beyond the window, and Reddington reached across the table with his good hand, fingers seeking out the cuff of the younger man’s jacket. “Donald, look at me.”

He could see Donald’s Adam’s apple bob, but those brilliant blue eyes finally flicked up. Silent. Questioning.

“I want to know why you’re still here.”

Donald hesitated, his tongue doing that delicious ting with his bottom lip, but just as it looked like he was preparing to answer, his eyes flicked down to Reddington’s left side. “How’s your arm?”

It was Red’s turn to hesitate. 

“Jesus,” Donald muttered, and leaned forward, across the ancient beer-stained wood. “What were you even trying to do, that day with Luzhin? You shouldn’t have even been there. The fuck were you thinking?”

“I was trying to stop him from arresting you,” Reddington said carefully, and then realized the implication in Donald’s phrasing. “You were there.”

“I was leaving. Got a message from Aram, figured it was time to go.” Donald stopped. “I... I heard a bit of it. And I saw Dembe, in your car. I’m sorry about him, I really am.”

Red took a deep breath. Dembe. His poor boy. He’d tried, back in the day, to convince him to stay on at college, take that offer for the Linguistics program at University of Chicago. But no, Dembe had been loyal, loyal to a fault, and he’d asked to stay on in the organization instead. 

It had been selfish, agreeing. Wanting to keep him close. Being relieved the boy didn’t want to leave him.

That more than anything else, Reddington regretted.

His life was a solitary one. By design. By necessity. Letting somebody else get that close, crawl into his heart, just wasn’t a luxury he could afford himself. Reddington knew he should left that part of himself behind that horrible Christmas Eve. For a long time, he’d believed he had. Even Dembe had been an act of mercy and convenience and a dozen other things that could be written off as good business. 

There was nothing good for business about FBI Agent Donald Ressler. 

The man in front of him then, though, wasn’t an FBI agent anymore. Wasn’t even Donald Ressler. Reddington did not, in fact, have any idea what it was he was looking at.

And that, too, was intriguing.

“Donald...”

“We’re even, Reddington. You saved me from Camio, I got you away from the FSB. What do you want from me?”

“Is that the only reason you came? So we could be... even?”

Donald’s eyes were hard. “Yes.”

“And why not just leave me there? Let me rot in that pit? That would be justice, wouldn’t it?”

“It wasn’t justice. That wasn’t justice. It’s not the justice you deserve, for the lives you’ve ruined.”

“Lives. And what about you, Donald? How many children will never see their fathers again, because of what you did, that night?”

“Red...”

“Those men were government officials. Just the kind of men you profess to love, the kind of man you were, and...”

“Well, I’m fucking not a government official any more, am I?” Donald hissed back. “I’m not some bitch boy at the FBI, dancing to your fucking tune!”

There was anger in that, and regret, and pride. More pride than Donald realized, but it would him no good to have that pointed out to him. So Reddington filed it away for his own personal reference, and pressed. “Why are you still in town?”

Donald looked away. 

And Reddington, realizing what the boy needed, offered it.

“I’m the one that put you in Camio’s path. I did it on purpose. I wanted to see what you would do.”

“You...”

“That girl on the boat, the one that kept pestering you? She was ATF. She was supposed to guarantee your safety. She failed in her task, Camio disrespected me and my business by torturing you against my wishes...”

“You fucking... I could have died!” Donald hissed. His face was turning an alarming shade of red.

“But you didn’t. And you haven’t. You should be proud of that.” Movement caught Reddington’s eyes; the girl behind the bar, studiously pretending not to be curious about them as she wiped down glasses. 

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I want you to understand, Donald, that I respect you.”

“You don’t respect me.”

“I am not in the habit of being honest with people, Donald, especially not people who I’ve done harm to, and certainly not people whose company I enjoy.”

“You must be offering this for a reason.” Donald shook his head. “What’s the angle?”

“Do you really need to ask something that pedantic?” 

“I fucking know you lie to everyone. I know that not lying has some kind of twisted significance to you, like somehow, normal human behavior should be considered earth-shattering. What I don’t understand is what’s left to play here. I’m out of the FBI, I’m useless to you...”

Not knowing how else to get the boy to shut up and _listen_ , Reddington tugged on the sleeve of his left jacket arm.

And let the dead limb thump down on the table. 

“I’m considering removing this,” he said dispassionately, waving at it. “The wounds aren’t healing well, I’ve completely lost sensation due to nerve damage, and apparently there’s been some kind of damage to the blood vessels. If left on, it’ll likely rot off, cause my blood to go septic, and kill me.”

Donald’s eyes flicked down to it. Back up. Narrowed. “What’s your point?”

“My point is, that would all be happening, right now, in a hole in the middle of the Republic of Buryatia, if not for you. You didn’t have to come, but you did.” He tapped the table thoughtfully, not sure how to say the next part without sounding pathetic. “In this world you find yourself in now, Donald, you must understand. You don’t come for another person. You don’t do what you did, and you don’t do what you’re doing.”

“I’m not...”

“You want me to be honest with you, be honest with yourself. You’re in town because I am,” Reddington interrupted sharply, and continued. “You don’t do this, in our world, unless it means something. So I’m going to ask you again, why are you here?”

The girl finished with her glasses; something was frying in the kitchen. Reddington imagined he could hear the earth rotating. 

Donald Ressler. Fascinating man.

“I don’t... I don’t love you.”

“Donald, my dear boy, love is not something you feel in the darkness.”

“Holy shit... that’s why you do what you do. All your silk suits and yachting adventures and hundred year old whiskey, the joking around when somebody’s got a gun on you, the way you’re always looking for that one last high, all of it. It’s so you can feel the light again. That’s what you were trying to tell me in the box.”

Actually, Reddington had had no intention of telling Donald anything that day. Just wanted to keep him talking, listening. Alive.

He’d very much wanted to save the other man’s life that day.

“Perhaps I said more that day than I meant to.”

Donald shook his head. “You were right, about getting down so far you can’t feel the light anymore. I don’t... I don’t know how to live like this.”

Reaching forward with his good hand, Reddington stroked his fingers across the back of Donald’s hand. “I still see the light in you, Don. That fire of yours is still burning in your heart.”

“I don’t feel it.”

“I can show you. If you’d like me to.”

No words came. But Donald did turn his hand up, squeezing a little, even as the red rose on his cheeks and his eyes stayed firmly on the world beyond the windows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this! And... IDK, Reddington's POV is difficult and this has given me a lot of trouble. So the sex and fall out will be in Donald's POV, next chapter.


	12. Chapter 12

“Look, I agreed to come talk to you because the doctor was concerned. Nothing more.”

“Nothing? Nothing’s bothering you?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t like shrinks.”

The psychiatrist smiled at him, across her desk, hands neatly folded on the immaculate top. The office around them was sleek, Scandinavian, that chilled modernity so many people in Europe seemed to adore. The entire clinic was done up in the same style, a small, private place that catered to medical tourists, people not willing to wait on a list in their home country, people who demanded total discretion in their personal affairs. It was very much the type of place a Bond villain might come for cosmetic surgery. Appropriate, Ressler had thought. 

“I’m not here to pry, Mr. Becket,” she said. “Amputations are extremely traumatic events, and affect more than just the patient. As his husband, I imagine you must be very conflicted about this.”

Ressler tried not to roll his eyes at the title Reddington had insisted he wear for the during of this operation. Valid concerns backed up with a brand new set of false identities. It was ridiculous, but it wasn’t, and really, the whole thing should have bothered him more than it did. 

He’d been allowed a few glimpses of Reddington before they’d wheeled him into the recovery room. They’d taken a lot, more than what had been briefed the day before at the pre-op meeting with the surgeon, nothing there but a small stump no thicker than his fist, swathed in clean white dressings. 

For Ressler, Raymond Reddington had always been a larger than life figure, almost mythic, the rare criminal who was greater than the sum of his case files, than the legend he wore like armor. He’d looked small on that gurney. Vulnerable. 

It was strange. The whole thing was strange.

“I don’t care about his arm being gone.”

“You might. It will affect your relationship. He’ll need assistance with things he didn’t before, he may struggle with emotions of grief and loss, intimacy...”

“We haven’t been intimate for a long time,” he interrupted, not at all wanting to get into that topic. “I doubt it’s going to resume any time soon. I’m not worried about it.”

She shifted, interested, Ressler realized too late. “And why is that?”

“We’ve been... estranged for a while, I suppose you could say.”

“But you’re back with him now. Is it because of the arm?”

He licked his lip, trying to think of how to frame the last few months. Why had he stayed back, in the little ski town? Laying low, sure, while INTERPOL burnt out its investigation into his whereabouts, until he went back down to low priority. He could have done that anywhere, but _anywhere_ wouldn’t have had Bruce and Trevin giving him updates, letting him know what was going on...

“He did something stupid, pissed off the wrong people, and I had to go drag his ass out of it.”

“Pissed off the wrong people, hmm.” She consulted a file. “Is that the reason for the amputation?”

“Ma’am, I’m sure you’re very good at your job...”

“I see some pretty strange things walk through my door,” she said, cutting him off with that unnervingly even smile. “Rest assured, this clinic would not exist without complete discretion for our patients and their families. I have your husband’s medical report, and I spoke to his private physician when you arrived two days ago. It was torture, wasn’t it?”

“They had him hooked up to a car battery when I arrived.”

“And you got him out, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“When was the last time you two were together? Intimately?”

“Does that matter?” he snapped, and then sighed, dropping his head. What the hell? He was tired of carrying all this, tired of everything. “I don’t know. Almost two years. He stopped sleeping with me, and I left.”

“Because of that?”

“Because of a lot of things.”

“But you came back to him.”

“He came back to me.” He stared at his hands. “I don’t love him, and he doesn’t love me. It was always sort of casual.”

“Must have been serious, if you married him.” 

Ressler snorted. “We’re not married. I’m sure you’re aware we’re here with aliases. He wanted to make sure, if something went south, the decision to take him off life support would be in my hands, not yours. I believe his exact words were, I don’t trust the Europeans and their penchant for euthanasia.”

She nodded. “We would never do that here.”

“He’s paranoid.”

“But he came back for you, a former lover who walked away from him.”

“He doesn’t like giving up control.”

“But he gave it to you. The power of life or death over him.”

“He knows I’d opt for killing him, if the situation arose.”

“You make it sound like he’s your enemy.”

“That’s a better word than husband to describe him.”

“But he came back for you, and then you came back for him,” she said. “That doesn’t sound like enemies to me.”

He ran his hand through his hair, grimacing a little at how greasy it was. When was the last time he’d showered? Day before yesterday, probably, the morning the left the safety of the chateau for the drive to Zurich.

“I don’t know what else we can be. He keeps everyone at arm’s length. His friends,” and Ressler chuckled humorlessly, “his ex-wife. Everyone.”

“Is he warm with you?”

“Only after sex. Or when he wants sex.”

“Is he warm with anyone else?”

Ressler sighed. “A girl I used to work with. He’s warm with her. You know, showered her with attention, affection... half our office thought they were fucking, and the other half thought he was her dad or something. Everything was about Keen. Just... fucking everything.”

“Were you jealous of her?”

“What does this have to do with him losing an arm?”

“We’re talking about you, Donald. No need to be defensive.” She was quiet for a moment. “What happened to this Keen woman?”

“I have no idea. Our, umm, company put her out in Kansas.”

“What’s the significance of Kansas?”

“It’s just a shit place to live.”

+++++

The day passed slowly, while Ressler waited for Reddington to come out of the anaesthesia. The clinic was situated in an innocuous-looking old building, backing onto a canal. From the street, it looked like the first floor shops gave way to four floors of apartments; Ressler ate his lunch at a cafe across the narrow cobblestone street, admiring the deception. It was really very well done. Place even had generators in the basement, according to the staff, to avoid drawing too much power - and therefore, attention - from the city grid. 

It was cold in the streets, and rainy, and as much as Ressler wanted to go wander through it, he just finished his coffee and went back to the clinic. Back to the rooms they’d been given for the duration of Reddington’s recovery, the comfortable Danish armchair beside the hospital bed where Reddington was still asleep. Every hour or so, the same quiet blond nurse came in, checked his vitals, adjusted the IV drip, and left him alone again. Ressler didn’t fully trust the clinic’s wifi, so he got a book from the well-stocked, multi-lingual library, some stupid old Michael Crighton novel, and settled in to wait.

He was considering ordering dinner, when Reddington finally roused. It was quiet, little more than a rustle of sheets, but it was enough to get Ressler to lay his book aside and reach up. “Reddington,” he murmured, standing up next to the bed. “Can you hear me?”

“You never call me Raymond,” Reddington muttered, eyes open but glazed. “Why don’t you call me Raymond?”

“You’re not Raymond right now, remember? Don’t tell the doctor that,” Ressler replied, and frowned. Reddington looked pale, gray. “How you feelin’? You took a really long time to come to.”

Reddington’s remaining hand reached out for his, fingers inching across the white blanket. They squeezed with crushing force, when Ressler slid his hand undernearth. “How much did they take?”

“Almost all of it,” he answered quietly. “I talked to the surgeon after they finished. Your finger tips were showing signs of necrosis, your veins around your elbow were almost completely collapsed, and they were worried about the viability of the rest of the arm. You’ve got enough to have a prosthesis fitted, but...”

“No need for that right now.”

“They said it’ll help with the loss.”

“No crying over spilt milk and all that, Donny.”

The psychiatrist’s words came to mind, and Ressler shook his head, pulling away again. “I should go get the nurse.”

She fussed, the nurse did, reviewing every little detail of Reddington’s current condition with a doctor, one of the attending on the surgery. French, a language Ressler could almost understand. He caught a few words here and there, but Reddington’s eyes were keen.

“They know who I am,” he said, after both the nurse and doctor departed, painkillers administered through his IV. 

“You worried about that?”

Reddington closed his eyes for a moment, drawing a few breaths, clearly in pain. “The glass here is bulletproof, the doors reinforced. They cater to the paranoid elite. I’ll be fine.”

“I’m not leaving,” Ressler said quietly, turning his hand over, fingers pushing through Reddington’s. He reached back to pull a chair up next to the bed. 

Opening his eyes again, Reddington looked more tired than Ressler had ever seen him. “My pretty boy,” he said, and then frowned.

His stump had twitched.

He closed his eyes again.

“The psychiatrist says that’ll be normal.”

“I know what phantom limb syndrome is.”

“Yeah, but you’ve never dealt with it before.”

“I can feel that morphine hitting. Be a dear and turn the TV on, would you? Perhaps football is on.”

Football was on.

Ressler ordered them dinner.

Reddington was throwing up in the bathroom by half time.

+++++

Healing was slow.

Besides the physical - constant pain, an infection scare, therapy to get the muscles in Reddington’s shoulder working again - Ressler had to admit, the psychiatrist had been on to something. The amputation had changed Reddington, and not for the better.

He’d always been a man of motion. That was the first thing Ressler had discovered, chasing him all over the world. Reddington was mobile, always on the move, mind zinging off in a dozen different directions, following paths only he could see. After the surgery, he was confined to the clinic, its common areas and the physio rooms and their own little suite. 

It should have made him restless.

Instead, well.

Ressler had been expecting complaints of some kind, snarky stories and sarcastic quips covering up the pain.  Instead, the older man approached everything - the physical therapy, the sudden agony that burst through the painkillers like a lighthouse beacon through the fog, the sessions with the psychiatrist - with a silent, stoic determinaton Ressler had never seen in him before.  It was odd, but at the same time, it fit somehow.  Made Ressler feel like he was looking at the Naval intelligence officer, the Annapolis grad being groomed for admiral, rather than the criminal from the FBI's case files. 

Ressler wasn't sure he liked the revelation.

But Ressler wasn’t sure what to do with it.

Reddington wouldn’t talk to him. Wouldn’t talk to the shrink. Wouldn’t _deal_ with whatever the fuck was going on in his head.

The silence of the PT sessions followed back into the suite, and reigned at meals. Reddington barely spoke to him, and although the room came with a double bed, Reddington refused to sleep there.  He propped himself up on a memory foam bolster in the hospital cot instead, and the one time Ressler tried to talk to him about it, his response was bullshit.

''I can sleep on your right side, you know.”

‘’I am aware of that, Donald.”

“I'm not going to crush your shoulder in the middle of the night.”

“It’s not so much a shoulder as it is a stump. Let’s be accurate with our choice of language, shall we?”

Ressler was half-tempted to ask why Reddington had offered what he offered, if this was all that was going to occur between them.

There was no answer to that.

There wasn’t an answer to a lot of things.

It was hard, seeing the man without an arm. 

The third week in, fed up and thoroughly bored, Ressler took a job down in Naples.  Another in Rome, after that wrapped up.  Finding a couple of Mafia soldiers who'd talked to the cops.  An easy twenty grand.  He had Reddington's current burner phone's number, but he didn't bother calling.  What was the point?

He was gone three weeks.

It was Bruce who called to let him know they'd moved.  Back to the chateau.  The ski season would start soon, lots of people in the region. Not really safe for a guy who was currently head lining INTERPOL's watch list. 

Ressler went back anyway.

“Donald, darling, how nice to see you," Reddington said with genuine warmth, the afternoon Ressler walked back into the chateau. "Wasn't expecting to see you so soon."

The criminal had ensconced himself in the old library. Its shelves were filled with younger books mixed in with tomes that had likely been there since Napoleon, the minimalistic modern desk in the center a stark white against the ancient woodwork and battered leather chairs. Reddington had clearly taken the place over; his work equipment was spread across the desk, his favored blankets from the bedroom upstairs folded neatly on the edge of the largest chaise. The old lady who maintained the place, a petite Boer woman with steel in her eyes, was cleaning up the remains of what looked like lunch.

“Good to see you too,” Ressler replied, hands in his pockets, trying to gauge the situation.

“How went your job?”

“Fine.” 

He knew who the man in front of him was, what he had done, what he was capable of and what he wasn’t, couldn’t. Not anymore. And despite the fact Ressler had spent the first five years of their acquaintance trying to put his ass in prison, it was still somehow tragic.

Reddington nodded to the caretaker. “Kirsten, would you be so kind as to give Donald and I a moment?”

Silent, she nodded, and left the tray of dishes on a side table, closing the doors behind her.

“Job was simple,” Ressler explained, after she was gone, and dropped his computer bag beside the desk, gesturing from Reddington to stand. “Come on, let me see how you’re doing.”

The sweater Reddington was wearing had clearly been tailored professionally, with the neat tuck of the sleeve barely extending six inches below the shoulder seam. He shrugged out of it stoically, not protesting at all as Ressler peeled up the shirt arm underneath carefully away.

The incisions had closed while he was away, the last of the stitches out, and Reddington had the remnants of his left arm bound up in something called a shaper.  

"For a prosthesis,'' he explained, when Ressler asked about it. "Needs to be a proper one, not one of those ghastly flesh-colored things with the hook at the end."  And he snapped his fingers, grinning. "Have I ever told you about Chief Petty Officer Berkowitz?  He was a 'Nam vet who worked in the mess at school.  Cranky sonafabitch, he used to..."

And that, right there, was Reddington’s problem, the command he had of everything and everyone around him. Ressler had thought long and hard about this, about all of this, on the train ride back up from Rome, during those weeks of silence, and this was Reddington’s fucking problem.

Everybosy letting him get away with this shit.

He just picked up his bag and walked out of the room again.

Briefly, Ressler considered taking one of the guest rooms, but found his clothes from the clinic in the master suite instead.  He left his gear next to the nightstand on the right side of the bed.

Reddington could fucking deal with it.

But later that night, as he watched Reddington struggle out of that t-shirt for bed, Ressler couldn’t pretend to stay angry about it. 

Instead, he batted Reddington’s hand away, stepping in himself to take care of it. Reddington’s expression went blank as Ressler got the offending garment off over his head, and it was immediately clear why; he’d lost a lot of weight, during his month with the Russians, and amassed a collection of fresh new scars. Little things, spidery and thin, but the pain behind them was very real. He could see the older man’s ribs. It occurred to him this was the first time seeing him naked since the last time they’d had sex. Years ago.

“Your arm’s gone, Raymond,” he said quietly, hand lingering on the bandaged remnant of it. “Your arm’s gone, and your bodyguard’s gone and you need to start thinking about what happens when you leave this place.”

“He wasn’t just a bodyguard, Donald.”

He sighed. “I know. I know that.”

It was strange, sleeping next to him that night. Reddington turned into him in sleep; the weight of his body didn’t drape right, the shape of his shoulder different. But that wasn’t what the problem was.

They hadn’t slept in the same bed, together, for a long time.

Ressler stayed awake for a long time, cataloging it all, until he was satisfied enough that he wouldn’t wake with a gun at his temple or an empty space next to him, and drifted off in the moonlight.

+++++

“I’d like to contract your services, Donald,” Reddington said over breakfast that morning. 

The table was tucked under the window, the old stone clearly cut out for a bigger single-pane window at some point in the distant past, and there was a draft. It was snowing outside, the first fall of the season, blanketing the empty branches of the garden’s bushes with soft white. The mountains swirled with gray, putting Donald in mind of the storms that used to sweep through the Rockies of his childhood. The scent of the earth as it grew cold. 

In contrast, the kitchen was warm from the stove, coffee percolator still working quietly atop a burner, scones hot on the table, the caretaker who baked them nowhere to be seen. The twins had stayed in Zurich with the jet.

They were, for all intents and purposes, more alone than they’d been since the cell, or the box.

And one of them wasn’t half dead.

It was a strange, novel sort of thing.

Ressler just reached for the jam. “For what, exactly?”

“Anything I might need, that might arise in the future. I would very much like to keep you on retainer.”

“Red...”

“I’m not asking for an exclusive contract. I fully expect you would come and go as you pleased, take other jobs on the side as you deem fit. I would require my needs be prioritized, of course, but considering what I’d be paying you, I doubt that would be an issue.”

“Red...”

“I would much prefer you to the current hunter I have. Miserable little man that he is, your company is quite...”

“Red!”

Reddington finally shut up, looking at him with a pensive expression. “What, Donald?”

“If you want me to stay, here, with you, you need to ask.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

“I realize that.”

“You’re very good at what you do, Donald. I must admit, I wasn’t sure how well you’d fare away from the mothership, but you’ve surpassed...”

“Do you want me with you? Not as an employee or a fuck toy, but a man you actually...” But saying _partner_ or _lover_ would have sounded ridiculous. “Somebody you care about.”

Reddington stared at him, that irritating head-cock that usually meant he was pissed, his fingers drumming on the top of the worn old table. 

''I know how you see me," Reddington said quietly.  "A man who's sold his soul to get to where he is."

"A narcissistic pleasure seeker who betrayed his country for no discernible reason," Ressler agreed, and took a bite of his breakfast. It was delicious, thick and sweet.  "But that's how you want us to see you.  The man with this preternatural control over the criminal underworld."  He sat forward a little.  "The whole time I was hunting you, I never could figure out why.  But it's about what happened that night with your family, isn't it?  The Fulcrum, somebody came to you for it, and you ran.”

Those fingers curled. “Why does it matter?”

"What'd they threaten you with?  What'd they promise you? See, that's the part I can't figure out. What in the hell is so bad that a highly decorated Annapolis grad..."

And Reddington started laughing. One of those hearty, sarcastic belly laughs of his, and pushed back from the table. “If you think anyone in the DoD gives a shit about service grads,” he chuckled, walking over to the stove to check on the coffee, “you're highly mistaken. It's a status without benefit."

Ressler licked a crumb off his lower lip.  "I've seen your service record. It's glowing."

"I was intelligence, not surface warfare.  Making admiral would have been something of a minor miracle."

"So you're saying the Navy's story is a lie?"

"I'm saying that story was concocted by a bored staffer at the New York Times who had no idea what else to do with the bag of facts he was handed.”

"What's the Fulcrum, and why did it cost you your life?"

Reddington huffed, eyes turned up to the dark beams above them. For a moment, he was so quiet Ressler could hear the coffee bubbling.  "I have no idea,” Reddington finally said.  “You would not believe the rumors. I’ve heard everything from the codes to a secret nuke base to alien DNA to proof that Jesus never existed. Doesn’t really matter. It serves its purpose enough as a mystery. Some very important people are very afraid of it, and that’s all that really matters about it.”

“But it has to be something.”

“I’ve always believes it to be some kind of intelligence motherlode, but it would have to be constantly updated, an entire infrastructure in place to keep it relevant enough to be the persistent threat some people believe it to be."

"What people? The people that were at your house that night?"

Reddington switched off the stove and turned up a pair of mugs from one of the open cabinets. He was getting better with working one-handed, but Ressler had been with him long enough to notice the little jerks, the way his body still instinctively tried to employ his left hand in simple task, the slight turn of his body or the way his shoulder pulled up under his mechanic’s sweater. 

It was difficult, seeing the man like that; it bothered Ressler more than he cared to admit to himself.  

"What happened in the past is past,” Reddington said softly, as he poured them both a cup.

"Meaning?"

"The author is a poor choice to offer a definitive analysis of the novel. I don't know if I can continue to write it one-handed."

"You don't have to," Ressler replied, increasingly confused.  "Go buy yourself an island somewhere and drop it all."

"I stop writing, I die," Reddington replied bluntly. "They aren't going to stop coming for me."

''All of this, what you've done, that's been because of this?"

"It's how it started.  Before I realized I was much better at being a criminal than an officer. Pays better too." Reddington waved at the coffee, lifting his own to his lips.  "If you'd like yours, may I suggest you get it yourself?"

Ressler stared at him, something coming together in his head. He snapped his fingers, because there din’t seem to be anything else to do. “Jesus. The task force. That wasn't revenge. It was amends." 

“Come get your coffee, Donald.”

+++++

An that’s how things went for a few days. Stilted conversations, broken up by meals and sleep and exercise, the entire world narrowing to the walls of the chateau, the snowy slopes freezing them into some kind of timeless reality. It was pleasant and rich, but cold, and Ressler had no idea how to break through any of it, thaw it out.

They hadn’t fucked.

Maybe that was the thing they needed. He wasn’t sure. But it seemed as good an idea as any, and he was bored, and he was horny, and so he didn’t even try to be subtle about it.

He walked straight down to the library, kicked the doors shut behind him, unbuttoning his shirt off as he made a beeline for the desk where Reddington was buried in his computer.

Ressler dropped the oxford on keyboard.

Pushed it back.

Sat in its place.

Reddington, for first time Ressler could remember, was actually speechless.

“I want your mouth on me,” he said, blunt as he could, leaning forward, fingers resting on his fly. “I want to feel your lips on me, I want you to gag on it. I want to come down your throat and have you...”

But he was stopped by the soft touch of two fingers against his side. Right over his hipbone. Pressing down, sliding back.

“You lied to me, Donny,” Reddington murmured, his voice unlike anything Ressler had ever heard before. Pure, unadulterated lust shone in his eyes. “That’s very, very bad of you.”

It was his tattoo. Reddington was touching his tattoo. 

And Ressler hadn’t gotten that hard, that fast, ever before in his life. 

Reddington stood, hand trailing up Ressler’s side, spreading up against the column of his throat, the vee of thumb and forefinger cradling his chin. He didn’t speak, and neither did Ressler, the clock in the back of the room silently counting out the moments between this discovery and the breaking point.

He pushed up, pushed in, hands coming up to cradle Reddington’s head, and brought their lips softly together.

Red moaned, fingers digging into the soft skin of his neck, and pushed Ressler back down on the messy surface of the desk. 

Objectively speaking, it wasn’t the best sex of Ressler’s life. The desk, low as it was, wasn’t quite the right height for something like this, and the way Reddington moved against him was different now, the heat of his body shifting away far too often. Ressler had had the presence of mind to bring a packet of lube with him, but actually managing the logistics of that was difficult. There was a bit of cussing, a few moments where Ressler had to tell him to stop, come back down, kiss him some more.

But it was surprisingly easy to slip his right arm around Reddington’s left side, notch in and take that weight as Reddington pushed up inside of him, simpler to find their rhythm than he’d feared it would be. And the hot rush of the other man’s release, deep in his gut, was exactly the way he remembered it.

Wasn’t the best sex of his life.

It was the most satisfying, though.

Reddington pulled out and sort of fell back into the chair he’d been sitting in before. Fully dressed, cock still half-hard on the gray wool of his slacks.

He looked too stunned to speak.

Ressler just retrieved his pants from the floor, pulling them back on with a smug smile. “I’m gonna go hit the bathroom,” he said casually, and dragged Reddington up for another kiss. “You wanna do an early dinner in town? There’s that lovely steakhouse with the stupidly expensive wine menu you haven’t taken me to yet.”

It gets him a slow series of blinks. “What was that?”

“You’re buying me dinner,” Ressler replied, unable to stop grinning.

“Oh.” And Reddington shook his head, arching an eyebrow. “When did you turn into such a diva?”

“You promised you were going to show me how this whole hedonism thing works, didn’t you?”

“I don’t think that was exactly the gist of the conversation...”

“Dinner’s a good start, don’t you think, Raymond?” 

Reddington sighed a little and shifted forward, enough to reach out and take Ressler’s hand in his own. “Whatever you want, darling,” he said in a low voice, and kissed the younger man’s knuckles.

The steakhouse had some very lovely venison options, it turned out.

Reddington didn’t even read the wine menu. Just told the waiter - and then the manager - exactly what it was he wanted, and ten minutes later, a bottle of 1988 Henri Jayer Cros Parantoux was being decanted by the restaurant owner tableside.

“To beginnings,” the criminal said smoothly, glass tilted in invitation. “Come work for me, Donald. I have a few openings in my organization, I’m sure we can find a place that’s the right fit for you.”

Ressler clinked his own against it, taking a small sip and let the flavor explode in his mouth. He savored it for a moment, not realizing he’d closed his eyes until he opened them, smiling a little. “To beginnings,” he agreed.

And for a few hours, everything was exactly as it should be.

+++++

One of requirements, or perks, depending on a man’s point of view, of being Reddington’s right-hand man was dressing for the part. So Reddington had handed him a hand-written list of shops and names over breakfast and told him to go make himself presentable. 

He hadn’t even included a credit card.

Turned out that wasn’t a problem. Reddington had accounts set up for him at every single one of the stores.

Even the flagship Omega store, where the owner had produced a tray of chrome and platinum chronographs and told him it would all be taken care of, a gift from _I’m sure you know_. Ressler considered going with the most expensive one, just to prove a point, but settled on the graphite-and-orange Seamaster. The links had already been taken out. A perfect fit.

Felt good on his wrist.

Trevin drove, and predictably, Trevin thought the entire thing was hilarious. Ressler tried not to go overboard, but everything just felt so nice against his body, it was hard to show restrain. But he knew how Reddington worked, how he traveled, and he resolutely kept himself to what could fit in the storage compartments on the jet with Trevin’s advice. 

He was still in the middle of having a suit measured at the tailor shop Reddington had required he visit - _if you only stop at one place today, you must stop here, Lars is a funny little man out of Norway but let me tell you, can he make even the schlubbiest of male bodies look divine, and Donny, you have anything but_ \- when the bell at the door tinkled.

Reddington, sitting down in one of the plush chairs in the fitting room.

“A true gentleman always gets his suit custom made. Wearing off the rack, untailored garb is so uncivilized,” Reddington said, settling his hat on the chair adjacent to him. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“So what are you doing in one?” Ressler shot back, smiling a little. The tailor smirked too, pinning up the sleeve hem on his left hand. He’d already taken measurements for a true custom-make suit, but Ressler had a few things from other shops that needed adjusting as well.

“I’d love to see you in one of those stylish skinny-cut things, like the Norwegian boys wear. Wouldn’t you agree, Lars?”

The tailor nodded. “I’ll add it to his order.”

“Lovely, that’s lovely.” And Reddington cocked his head. “Would you mind giving us a few moments? Donald and I have some business we need to discuss.”

The tailor inclined his head again, vanishing practically before Ressler could say anything, and he just stepped down from the room’s central platform instead. “What is it?”

“I do hate to interrupt this little shopping expedition, of course, but I’ve gotten some news today.”

“About?”

“About loose ends.”

Ressler licked his lip, thinking. “I know we need to deal with the Luzhin situation. I’ve got a few ideas, if that’ll help. He handles some of your transport, right?”

“You’re right, Luzhin must be dealt with.” Reddington’s smile withdrew a bit, that thing he did where he sort of swallowed it. “I was talking about your former colleague, actually.”

Ressler frowned. “Aram?”

“Keen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's coming in for a landing!
> 
> God bless last week's episode of The Blacklist. I know it was short, but I really liked the insight into Donald's mindset and how he's dealing with everything that's happened to him and everything they have to do.


	13. Chapter 13

Setting it all up was the hard part.

Ressler liked plans like that. Meant everything would work perfectly, utterly under control, every piece perfectly positioned for maximum chaos, like dominoes on a smooth floor.

And he’d done it in less than 36 hours. 

“That’ll do for now,” Reddington told him, on the plane ride to London. They had a seven hour window, between touching down at Heathrow and taking off again, to get this done. “I’ll expect better in the future, of course.”

“Oh, is that so?” Ressler rolled his eyes and reached for his drink. Reddington had broken out the champagne for ride, and while Ressler had told him it was a terrible cliche, it was excellent. Exactly the kind of thing that belonged on a private jet owned by an international criminal.

“I have very high expectations for my people.”

“I thought we agreed I wasn’t an _employee_.” He dragged the word out on purpose, mostly teasing, and smirked across the jet.

Reddington sniffed. “And so we did. But if you’re going to be my man rather than the hired help, I’m afraid the expectations are even higher.”

Ressler shook his head, thinking about all the ways the next couple of days could go wrong. “You sure you’re okay with handling Luzhin this way?” 

“Oh, I’m sure an understated message will be much appreciated. The man clearly values his privacy, and besides, you remember how much you liked yours, don’t you?”

Even though he wouln’t admit it, Ressler knew Reddington was grateful not to have to walk back in there with Luzhin. Russians on a good day were unpredictable, and fuck only knew what the UC had been up to in the preceding months. Consolidating his power as head of the Vor, from what Ressler had been able to gather, as the preparations for Semyon’s trial pressed ahead. What the FSB was doing, that was harder to discern. There was nothing about Reddington’s capture, not anywhere, not even rumors; Russia was playing that one close to the vest.

But the problems plaguing Reddington’s supply lines out of Afghanistan had continued.

And Semyon had in solitary confinement for the past three months.

By Ressler’s estimation, Scotland Yard had gotten him to crack. Offered him some kind of deal. One probably bought with the crushing revelation that he’d nominated an FSB agent for stars.

It’s what he would have done.

Whatever testimony would be offered at the trial, whatever concessions had been made, intelligence produced, it would likely prove lethal for the Vory V Zakone heroin trade. And as much as Ressler hated that shit - those had been opioids prescribed to him, after the Anslo Garrick debacle - it wasn’t as if destroying the supply lines would cause the entire poppy crop for the year to spontaneously combust. Those drugs would go somewhere. 

Didn’t matter who was trafficking them.

The FSB could get the Vory V Zakone through whatever other means they wanted. Luzhin could let them destroy any other business they wanted. Just not those damn heroin routes.

Reddington had had a quality working relationship with Semyon for decades. Because there were a lot of other things that flowed out of Central and South Asia, and that, that the FSB didn’t get to have.

Luzhin was just going to have to reinstate that. One word from Reddington, one night spent by Ressler in Kirill’s bed, hell, one whisper spoken to the right man in St. Petersburg, and Luzhin would probably find himself immured. Some shit like that.

Vor were big on creative means of execution, from what he understood.

Ressler, in piecing this case together over the past few weeks, could understand what Luzhin was doing, sympathize with it even. He’d done undercover work, watched it devour people he’d worked with. It took a certain kind of strength to walk with monsters and not become one yourself.

But it was either killing him and restoring Semyon to power - a short term solution anyway, with a bigger headache at the end named Kirill - or killing Semyon and breaking Luzhin.

Luzhin was practical; everyone was practical in the end. He’d opt for self-preservation. Without trying to fuck them in the process.

Ressler hoped.

He really didn’t want to kill the man.

Even if the fucker probably knew what FSB was planning, when he lied straight out to Scotland Yard and went to them instead. And Ressler knew it would have been him in that hole, bait for Reddington, had Reddington not done what he did.

Ressler couldn’t discount the possibility that he’d been the catalyst for that particularly insane little decision, though, that Nikolai had gotten pissed about the fact he had a former FBI agent helping his psychotic boss kill people and just... used his own judgment.

Yeah.

He really, really hoped Nikolai would get the goddamn message.

“Oh yes, my enemy’s head in a box. Most romantic thing anyone’s ever given me. How could I forget?”

“Perhaps we’ll do something more Teutonic with this one. In your honor.”

Ressler resisted the urge to point out his family was Irish-Scandinavian. “What, like planting it on a stake outside the Trans Siberian?”

“Now wouldn’t that be fun?” Reddington replied with a smile, and patted his lap. “C’mere, darling. Want to rip those panties my boy’s wearing off with my teeth.”

Ressler grinned and set his drink aside, base of the flute settled deep in the deep recess of the cup rest. “What?” he challenged, sauntering over as best he could in the squeeze of the fuselage, bending down, hands on either side of Reddington’s chair. “Why would I be wearing those?”

“Because you’re terribly predictable,” Reddington said, and dragged him down by his belt. Teeth ghosting over his ear, he whispered, “I’m more worried about about you. You alright with this?”

“I’ve killed people before.”

“Not like this, you haven’t.”

Ressler just sank to his knees, hands sliding around the back of Reddington’s calves before moving up to his fly. “Stop talking,” he ordered quietly, “and let’s just enjoy the moment, shall we?”

Reddington checked his watch, and brought his champagne up with a smile. “Twenty minutes. And you’re sure you checked with the prison coroner?”

“And the guard detail for the night. They’re more than happy to help.”

“Have you ever been to the Jefferson in downtown DC, Donny?”

He popped the top button on Reddington’s fly, rubbing the back of his knuckles across the top of his hardening length. “Can’t say that I have.”

“They have the most delightful tea service in the afternoons. I can’t say if the Jeffersons were really into such a thing, but they were a product of that Anglo-colonial upbringing, so they likely partook. They have these delicious little... anxious, are we?”

Ressler yanked a little harder on Reddington’s trousers, tugging them the rest of the way down, out of his way. His lover’s cock sprung up, red and thick. He wrapped a hand around it, smiling. “Oh, don’t let me stop you. Keep talking. Like you’re going to stop.”

A hand settled in his hair, fingers caressing the soft locks - Ressler had left the styling gel out for the plane ride, for that very reason - and Reddington hummed his approval as REssler swallowed him down. 

“Like I was saying, they have the most delicious little tea sandwiches filled with this wonderful... ooh, Donny. I’m going to fuck you into the mattress when I get there, meet back up with you after this little Russian adventure, tea be damned...”

He pulled off with an obscene slurp, and pushed up for a kiss. “Think it’s my turn at your ass this time, don’t you agree?” he asked demurely, and, before Reddington could answer, went right back to sucking his cock.

And yeah, Reddington had been right.

Decadence.

Let him forget the future for a little while, created a moment full enough to push out the thoughts of what was to come, what he was going to go do to Tom Keen.

Ressler closed his eyes.

Felt whole.

+++++

"There's a lawyer here to see you."  
   
"The public defender?"  
   
"No, says he's from the Attorney General's office and wants to have a word.  I told him you have a meeting, and he gave me a card to give to you."  
   
Liz took the proffered piece of card stock from the uniformed trooper, confused about who would have come down to the station, who would have even known besides Aram.  
   
Until she turned it over.  Saw the name that was printed there.  
   
"You okay, Agent Keen?"  
   
"Yes, yes, absolutely," she lied, ice in her blood.  It couldn't be, could it?  INTERPOL hadn't heard a goddamn thing about him in months, not since he vanished off the face of the planet after that Vershinin debacle and...  
   
There was no way it was Don.  
   
No way he could risk walking into a DC police station, to do whatever it was he was planning on doing.  
   
He would have been able to find her hotel room, her rental car, her flight information, hell, a hundred easier places to ambush her, if he'd wanted.  
   
The name was coincidence.   _Donald Becket_  
   
"Thank you, Trooper," she said, pocketing it. "Show him in.  And do you know how much long the Detective Wilcox will be?"  
   
"No idea, ma'am.  You caught him right at the tail end of lunch."  
   
Liz drummed her fingers on the edge of the chair, folio spread out on her lap, eyes scanning the neat lines of type there.  She must have redone the thing half a dozen times before finally satisfying herself with this version.  It was honest, at least, blunt and to the point, without any of the ass-saving she'd found sneaking into her first few iterations.  
   
It'd be a relief, to have this over with.  
   
The whole last few years were like a bad fucking dream.  Reddington killing her father, Tom turning out to be some kind of double agent, the harbor master's death, Ressler's disappearance, the whole task force falling apart, their utility to Reddington complete, Cooper dying unexpectedly from some Stage-Four cancer, their last conversation that hideous discussion about how she was being transferred _and you know I’m a good agent, the best, it’s not my fault I was dragged into this Reddington disaster, why are you letting do this to me?!_

Fuck. Liz was carrying a lot of regrets.  
   
Top of that list was assuming Reddington had ever cared about her at all.  
   
She hated herself for that, they way she wondered.  Had he just been using her?  Had there been something else there?  How did her adoptive father know Reddington, and why did he trust him, and what was he going to tell her before he'd died?  Why was she somehow so important to Reddington that Tom had been injected into her life, just to catch him, and what had she done to make him walk away?  
   
Liz sighed; that last one she knew, at least.  
   
He'd found out about the boat.  About Tom.  About what she was doing.  
   
He'd found out about the boat, and he'd walked away.  
   
And the funny thing was, at the time she was doing it, Liz had felt empowered.  Righteous.  Clever, even.  Like it was something Reddington himself would have done, and wouldn't he be proud of her for figuring it out on her own?  
   
Fucking hypocrite.  
   
Behind her, the door clicked shut, and she started, looking up at the man who’d just walked in.  
   
And she felt the blood drain from her face.

Before she could so much as lunge for the pen cup, though, Ressler had the door locked, her chair jerked around, a hand on her throat.

A gun in her face.

She froze, eyes fixed on the pale barrel. “How...”

"All ceramic gun, right down to the bullets,” he explained calmly.  “Untraceable and undetectable by those sad little metal detectors down in the lobby.  Isn't technology a wonderful thing?"  
   
She glared at him, impotent and feeling it.  She'd left her own side-arm back home, in Kansas.  She wasn't there on official FBI business, and hadn't wanted to deal with the bother of checking the damn thing. Still. That was ridiculous. “You don't need that."  
   
"I'm not going to shoot you unless you make me," he replied levelly, and reached behind her to tug the blinds on the room's sidelite shut.  "Your decision on how cute you want to be."  
   
"Fuck you."  
   
Ressler just nodded nodded at the desk.  "Cell phone, weapon, everything, up there, right now."  
   
She moved slow, pulling her ponte jacket back to show him she wasn't carrying, and laid her Samsung down carefully.  "That's it."  
   
"Good," he replied, and sat down on the edge on the desk, gun still trained on her.  "Let's talk."  
   
"I'd feel better if you weren't pointing a weapon at me."  
   
He just pulled the desk's pen cup out of her reach, dropping it in the trash can, and laid the gun down flat on his thigh, barrel facing the wall.  “Now, Keen, it's come to the attention of a shared acquaintance of ours that you’re planning on doing something incredibly idiotic today. That true?”

“Idiotic? I have no idea what you mean.”

“Idiotic. Like turning yourself into a Detective Wilcox of the Metro PD for being an accessory to the murder of a harbor master about what, two years ago?”

She swallowed. “What?”

“Liz, I don’t know if you realize this, but you would have been indicted on those charges already, a long, long time ago, had Reddington not stepped in and handled the situation.”

Liz folded her arms, the timeline of events clear in her mind. She’d been over it and over it, before heading to DC. “No, that’s not what happened. A couple weeks after you left, Reddington went to Copper and informed him he was done cooperating with the task force. I was moved out of the task force the next day, and transferred to the Kanses field office by the next week. They literally moved my apartment for me, I was already there...”

“And none of this has any bearing on a criminal investigation in DC...”

“You’ve already got a gun on me, Don. Shut up and let me finish,” she snapped, and he shrugged. It just made her angrier, but it was intended to, and she kept it down. “A few months after the move, and I have the day if you care to know, it, I got a call from Wilcox. He said he had a witness. But the body guard didn’t talk and...”

“And that was because Reddington got his brother a heart transplant. Which means that his brother has knowledge of one of Reddington’s subsidiary businesses. If you testify, and corroborate the story from Wilcox’s field notes, that puts your body guard’s reversal into question, and you know goddamn well they will reach out to the State Department, they will dig into his family overseas, in Samoa...”

“And they find Reddington,” Liz said, groaning a little. “But Ressler, please try to understand, I can’t keep carrying this.”

“You’ve been doing just fine so far.”

“I’m not him!” she snapped, trying not to think about that interrogation room in London, how she’d been all but sent packing the very next morning. Fourteen hours on three different planes, and she’d come to the realization that she just couldn’t keep doing this. Couldn’t keep going the way she’d been going. Should never had set down that path in the first place. “I’m not you! I’m not okay with ”

He pursed his lips, looking away for a moment, and when he spoke again, he sounded like the man he’d been before the drugs, before he’d given up on the task force, on all of them. “Liz, look, I know Kansas is a depressing place to be, it’s a shit office with a shit mission, and you’re better than that. Reddington’s talked to some people, pulled a few strings for you...”

And she shoved back out of the chair. “Oh fuck this.”

“Sit down!” Ressler growled, grabbing her arm and throwing back into the seat. She tried to push back, but the gun was up again. As much as Liz hated it, she couldn’t rule out the possibility of him actually shooting her. So she sank back down, mind racing. “Jesus. Would you knock it off?”

“You’ve got a gun on me, Ressler, of course I’m not going to calm down!”

“There’s an open instructor assignment at Quantico. It’s yours. Full company move, promotion, whole nine yards,” he said, settling back on the edge of the desk, his hackles visibly sinking. “It’s a good deal. You should take it.”

“But I have to walk out of here right now, right?”

“Exactly.”

And Liz tried to think of a comeback, some way to punch back against that, but there was nothing. She was empty. She was tired of being of angry, tired of being manipulated, out of control of her own life. Ressler had been somebody she could be honest with. Once.

“I can’t do that,” she said softly.

“Take some time, think it over. A couple weeks. When was the last time you took a vacation?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. You went right back to work after the London bullshit, didn’t you?” And there he was again, the man she’d worked with, her partner. Concerned about her.

She shook her head, throat suddenly tight and eyes stinging. “I killed him. That harbor master, I killed him.”

“No you didn’t. That was Tom. You tried to stop him...”

“...but I didn’t,” Liz persisted, not stopping to wonder how Ressler knew about that. “I hesitated. And maybe I thought, for just one second, it would be better for me if he was dead.”

“You were doing what you needed to do to survive.”

“No. That man had a family. He had a life.”

“So that’s why you’re here? Talking to this Wilcox guy? Telling him everything?”

And that, Liz hoped he could at least understand, as she inclined her head to confirm. Ressler may have been working for Reddington now - and that was a terrifying thought, it was - but he’d never been evil. He’d never relished causing harm.

“And how many people are alive because of you? Because of the work we did?”

She was silent, unsure of where he was going.

“Fifty? A hundred? How many, Liz,” he said, voice growing angrier. “How many families have buried a mother, father, sister, brother? Children?”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“No, it’s never going to be right,” he said, cold, like he was lecturing a child. “The only question is the body count. So go ahead and nail yourself to a cross. And while you’re up there feeling sanctified, you consider who’s going to die because of this. How many secrets you claim to care about are going to be exposed.”

“Ressler...”

“No, don’t ask me to feel your pain, Liz. I’ve got more than enough of my own,” he snapped, and softened almost immediately. “This, talking to Wilcox, it fixes nothing.”

“I can’t keep doing the wrong thing.”

Old Ressler, the Ressler she knew, would have supported that.

The man in front of her just rolled his eyes, and handed her a cheap digital camera.

"I figured you'd say something like that.  So I got a sweetener, just to encourage you to do the right thing here."  
   
Her stomach sank as she turned it on.  "Like... holy shit."

Tom.  Tom's dead body, more accurately.  

She'd seen enough crime scene photos to know those weren't fake.

And Liz suddenly felt very ill.  
   
"I think you'll take comfort in the fact he didn't suffer.  Two shots, straight to the heart.  Exactly like they teach you at Quantico. You always liked body shots, right?”  
   
"You wouldn't."  
   
"I would."  
   
"My range scores aren't so good anymore."  
   
"That's why there's a few stray bullets here and there in the room.  Don't worry, I've processed plenty of crime scenes over the years.  Far more than you.  It'll pass muster."  
   
"You killed him to send me a message? Ressler... this...”  
   
Ressler just kept going, right up over the top over her, ignoring her completely.  "A cursory examination of the crime scene will indicate that it was your FBI issued weapon that fired the deadly shots, which of course was left on the scene..."  
   
There was something building in Liz’s chest. Hot and cold and... she’d loved Tom. She’d loved him, for years, even after he was gone, even after she _knew_ , she’d never been able to fall out of love with that geeky schoolteacher who’d... “I have an alibi, I was on a plane, I've been here..."  
   
“Those were taken an hour before you went through the security. Close enough. Forensics is good, but it can't pinpoint the exact moment of death, and even if it could, you know what a zealous prosecutor and a press eager for stories of cop brutality will do to a jury.  And a fed who's already admitted to conspiring in a murder?"  
   
"Stop," she pleaded.  
   
"Looks to me like you and Tom were secretly working together, that he found out you were coming to DC to turn him in and confronted you in your apartment, and you shot him during the fight.  Hell, I might even have cause to say that you actually killed the harbor master..."  
   
"Ressler, please, stop..."  
   
"...and Tom was trying to maintain his innocence, in the face of the cold-hearted bitch who refused to adopt a child with him and became increasingly distant, demonstrating a psychotic pattern of behavior after she was picked up by an FBI black ops unit..."  
   
"Stop," she begged, that stinging in her eyes impossible to ignore any longer, and she was not going to humiliate herself by crying.  "Jesus, stop, stop, stop."  
   
"Mr. Kaplan's there, right outside, right now, to clean up the entire scene. I call her, it’s like it never happened.  But if not?"  He leaned forward, tapped the screen with a finger.  "You're going to jail for the rest of your life, Keen.”  
   
She flipped through the pictures, helpless. Fuck. Ressler had even made it look like a fight. And she was still living out of hotel rooms. If this one was in her name... it would be in her name.  "Why did you do this?"  
   
"Take the deal, Lizzy.  Walk out of here, go home, take the Quantico job and for fuck's sake, take the apartment he bought you."  
   
She bit back her tears, shaking her head slowly. “I don't want anything from him."  
   
"Then go to jail for double homicide," Ressler said, cold, and stood.  "I don't really give a shit."  
   
She felt numb as he made for the door, knowing she should do something but unable to move a finger.  The knob clicked, though, and she took a deep breath, faced him.

“What happened to him? He disappeared, nobody’s heard or seen from...”

“You need to stop this futile investigation of yours, Liz. He’s not coming back. The task force is gone.”

“I know that,” she protested weakly, not wanting to name, much less give voice, to any of the things she was feeling right now. Every man she’d cared about, truly cared about, was gone. It was stupid, but she couldn’t get it out of her head. “Just tell me what happened.”

Ressler folded his arms, licking his lip before answering. “Luzhin called the FSB in. They caught Reddington, and chopped his fucking arm off. I barely got him out before he died. Fun story, right?”

“What?” she asked in disbelief, that not even computing. “So, what, is... is that what you’re doing with him?"  
   
"You mean, what is he doing with me?  Right?  After all the people I've killed, all the bad things I've done, when he callously tossed you away after one little mistake?  Right?"  
   
In the year and a half Liz had worked with him, Liz had never heard Ressler sound like that.    
   
He just kept going. “But see, that's the thing, Liz.  In his estimation, you're the one who failed, the disappointment."  
   
"And you?"  
   
"Guess we know which one of us he actually loves,” Ressler replied, cold, and holstered the gun under his suit jacket. “Oh, and by the way, Mr. Kaplan’s expecting her call in the next five minutes. If I’m stopped or bothered or detained at all on the way out of this building, they find that body.”  
   
Liz lasted as long as it took the door to close.

She wasn’t too proud to break down in tears alone.

But on her way to ladies’ room to wash down her face, long after, she had to pass the break room. Where CNN was reporting on a severed head, belonging to yet unidentified man, found hanging from a street light. 

Yuri Vershinin was giving the official statement on the matter.

It had to be Semyon, Liz knew with cold, hard certainty.

The head was directly outside the Trans-Siberian restaurant. Luzhin’s restaurant.

Liz didn’t bother with her face. 

Didn’t bother with Detective Wilcox.

Just walked out.

Not sure of what the hell she was going to do. What she could. What she _should_ , which, really, she knew she should have been asking herself a long time ago.  
   
There was a Starbucks at the end of the block, fully in view of the police station.  Liz wasn't sure what she was thinking, looking at it.  Maybe because it seemed like a likely location for Ressler to be waiting for her, or maybe she needed a coffee.  But whatever the reason, she looked.  
   
And couldn't look away.  
   
Because Ressler was sitting there, in full view of the street at an outside table, cell phone in hand.  Waiting, obviously, but not for her. For the town car that pulled up at the edge, door opening, an achingly familiar man getting out.

Reddington. Long coat draped over his shoulders, obscuring his body, and she wondered - hoped - if the FSB thing was bullshit. If that had even happened. 

But then he reached with a gloved hand, laying it on Ressler’s cheek as Ressler came over, tilting it up for a kiss that fell like a shadow on her heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Whew*
> 
> Wasn't this quite the haul? Thanks for sticking in there with me on it, and I hope it lived up to the last one! 
> 
> There's a little bonus that goes at the end of this... but that's going to have to come tomorrow!


	14. Chapter 14

Epilogue (of sorts)

Aram wasn't expecting the call.

Not at all.

But he was on his way home, and it was raining, and by the time he made the foyer of his apartment building, somewhere safe to pull his battered old Android out, the ringing had already stopped. He pulled up caller ID, and frowned at the area code. California. Who'd be calling him from California?

Must have been a wrong number, though.

No voicemail.

He re-pocketed his phone and fished out his key. Trudged the four stories up to the small efficiency apartment he could barely even fill. Four hundred square feet, and there was almost nothing in it. A bed, a desk, his equipment, and that was pretty much it. His work wardrobe was still packed in boxes, set off to the side of the bed, against the window; there was no need for it these days. He hadn't worn any of it since coming back from Turkey.

God, what had he been thinking? Ressler was lost, Reddington had been just as much of an asshole as he always was, and those twins... those twins had legitimately given him the creeps. There was something wrong with those two, and the fact that Ressler had barely blinked at any of it was a testament to just how far off the deep end he really was.

Everything they'd all promised him had been bullshit.

And even though Aram was trying very hard to keep it all in perspective - Reddington would have paid him in blood money, Ressler didn't really want him locked up in that basement, he'd put himself in the situation to begin with - he couldn't help but be angry.

Three months without a job now.

Not a goddamn thing to show for everything he'd done, all the risks he'd taken.

Hell, he'd even forged the orders for the twins to commandeer that Medevac plane, hadn't he? And they'd left him in that basement with a couple boxes of MREs and a case of bottled water and told him they'd be back in a week or two.

Aram had legitimately been afraid, for a few days towards the end of it, that they had left him there to die.

And there Don had gone. Off to save the wizard.

But at least he was back in DC, and he hadn't been arrested by anyone for impersonating an FBI agent overseas yet, so he supposed that was something. Nikolai was still alive, even if Semyon's head had been left outside the restaurant, and Aram was grateful for that. That Don, at least, hadn't gotten a good cop trying to do his job killed. It had sparked some kind of crisis in the Vory V Zakone, apparently. Fuck only knew what FSB was up to in regards to all of that, but the more news reports he saw on it, the more grateful Aram was that he no longer had access to JWICS. As bad as the media made things look from the outside, it could only be worse within.

Aram had heard some rumors, too, that Reddington was back in circulation, that he'd been spotted last week in Paris and this week in Bali. Probably taking some kind of honeymoon with Don, and that was just such a strange thought that Aram tried not to entertain it at all.

He needed to pick up a few more content design commissions. Or get his certs back up-to-date and find himself a real job again.

Quitting without notice wasn't exactly a black mark forever. It was IT; people did weird shit all the time, right?

And he was contemplating which frozen meal to heat up for dinner when the phone rang again.

Same number.

He hit the answer button.

"Hello? Is this Aram Mojtabi?"

A woman's voice. Pleasant. She'd pronounced his name perfectly. Weird. "Umm, yes, this is Aram. May I, uhh, ask who's calling?"

"Yes, yes, my name's Amanda Riggens and I'm the head of the hiring department at Google HR."

His mind went blank for a moment. Had he sent in a resume to them? There was no way he'd sent them a resume. Not a chance. "Umm, I appreciate the call, Ms. Riggens, but I'm... what is this in regards to?"

"Oh, my apologies, Aram. I was told you would be expecting my call. Has anybody from the Black Hat team been able to get back with you yet?"

"Back with me?"

"One of our Board members is very excited about the prospect of making you part of the team, and I'm wondering if you're free next week. We'd like to fly you out to our San Francisco headdquarters for a site visit and interview. Meet the rest of the team, that sort of thing."

Aram had to grab the refridgerator door for support. "You're considering me for a job?"

"Yes. There's a new junior director position open in our Cyber Sureity office. I have a copy of your resume in front of me now that was forwarded to me by a certain member of the Board. It's extremely impressive, especially your last few years at the FBI."

Lowering himself to the floor, back to the fridge, Aram felt faint. Reddington. Reddington must have made some threats or called in a favor or... hell, did the man own stock in enough quantity to just directly pull something like this? Holy shit. Google. Holy shit. 

"Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, Ms. Riggens, I would love to come work for you guys, I'm just not sure about..."

"It's an all expense paid trip, Aram, of course. If I can get your dates, I'll have my office handle all the details. We want you to be as comfortable as possible during this process."

"I don't know, it's... it's a lot to take in," he mumbled, running a hand through his hair.

"If it makes you feel any better, I have it on very good authority that this new position has been created for a reason. We wouldn't be offering it if we weren't sure of your qualifications." There was a pause, papers shuffling in the background. "Would you like to call me back at another time?"

"No, no, no, I'm good," he said, and tried to think. It wasn't Reddington handing him a job, was it? If there were still interviews and probably some competency and personality testing to be done, then it wasn't like he was being just given something. Still plenty of room to fuck it up, or win it on his own merits. "Just a little overwhelmed, that's all. Not every day a company like Google wants to hire me."

"Well, you must have made quite an impression. It's not every day I'm asked to call a prospective hire personally."

"What would the job entail?"

"Cyber Sureity oversees both the white and black hat teams we run. I'm not the tech master around here, but I'm sure the division heads would be more than happy to discuss where you would fit in. You're being given the opportunity to define your own role here. You'll find we're an extremely flexible company. What we want is for you to be happy."

"And I'd be working..."

"In San Francisco. And I know it's uncooth to talk about compensation packages at this point in the game, but I can assure you that you'll be more than able to enjoy the city the way it's meant to be enjoyed."

Aram looked around his little apartment, the remnants of his old life stuffed in boxes and stacked in corners, the cold gray sky of the East Coast outside his windows. And he thought about California, and Bali, and what it would be like to have his space filled with sunshine. If that was part of what Reddington was trying to give him here. 

An apology, perhaps, if they were the kind of men who apologized. Or a thank-you.

Or just a kick in the ass. An entreaty for a fresh start.

Which that, really, sounded like Reddington. And Don.

"I'm free on Monday," he said, and exhaled.


End file.
